Emma

[Curtis]

What's your maintance on your Marge tank at home?

[Emma Turner]

It's nice and easy!

Water changes are carried out almost every day (used to be every other day) due to the excellent new bigger RO unit recently acquired. To do this, the water is siphoned from the tank and outside onto the patio through the back doors of the house, using a long wide-bore piece of flexible hose. The new RO water collects in a large water butt outside, and when ready, it is pumped into the tank using another piece of hose connected to the submersible pond pump which sits inside the water butt. Takes 10 minutes at the most. (Helen and Martin actually saw us carry one out when they were here till late last Friday).

There are 3 large Eheim filters on the tank, which are serviced alternately. On average, one of the filters is cleaned every 2 weeks. They do get quite messy because of the stocking level and the amount of food going into the tank, but it's not too bad. We put a large amount of Rowaphos in the filters, which keeps the algae at bay, so I hardly ever have to algae wipe the tank (maybe once a month or so).

There are 2 large Aquaclear powerheads on the tank that have the Quickfilter attachments underneath to prevent fish from getting into the impeller and to help 'polish' the water. The fine filter pads that fit these are changed roughly twice a week. There is a UV unit on the tank, and the bulb gets replaced every 6 months.

Can't think of anything else right now, it's nice and straight forward.

So then, Curtis, are you thinking of getting a 'Marge Tank' for yourself ?

Emma

[Curtis]

A couple of questions...

So all water that is used for water changes are RO water for that tank?

Do you add anything to the RO water or to the water of the tank ever? For example to control hardness or PH?

How is the RO water heated so that the temp matches the tank?

How many gallons is the water change that happens daily?

Is this an automated process or a process you kick off manually daily?

I'm assuming RO water is stripped of chlorine and chloramines so that shouldn't be an issue.

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I'm getting married Sept. 8th, 2007.

Currently I have a 220 gallon tank, 125 and a 55 gallon tank and several 10 gallon Q tanks.

Once I get married my tanks will be moved into our home which means my tanks will be in the basement. With the larger space that I have I plan to add 2 - 220ish tanks to the mix.

The current plan is to put them on a central system and I already have a 150 gallon rubbermaide horse trough for a sump.

So I will have almost 1000 gallons worth of tanks on this system, so I'm trying to get a decent understanding of how other people handle large systems, and so far you are the only person I know that has a large tank as well.

[Emma Turner]

Congratulations on your forthcoming marriage!

Yes, we use soley RO water on the tank, as our local water is very hard (20 deg dH) and full of phosphate. We use Tropic Marin Remineral Freshwater remineralising powder in the RO water which replaces all the trace elements the fish need, and buffers the water.
For most of the year, the RO water we use is not heated. Each daily change is approx 10% of the volume (approx 25 US gallons or so), and even though the water is a bit cooler, it doesn't cause any problems in such a large tank. In the winter, we run the water off into 25 litre containers and store them indoors next to radiators or near the fireplace to take the chill off of it.
Our water changing process is not automated, we do this manually. However, at work where the systems are centralised, we have pressurised sand filters (similar to what is used on swimming pools). By backflushing these, you remove water from the system, and the ball valve then causes the system to top up automatically. At this point we have to manually add dechlorinator. With the RO, you do not need to use dechlorinators.

Emma

[Curtis]

Wonder what that product would be called in the states? or what I could buy it.

Also, can you describe your setup at your shop where you have the sand filters? I'm looking for good ideas on how to setup my new tank central system.

Thanks.

[helen nightingale]

sorry to butt in on this one.

i know some people who have their water in a big storage tank, with a big heater in. then the water can be heating up to the right temperature before water changes.

when we saw Emma do a water change, i was very impressed how quick it was, and her tank is immaculate.

congratulations on your wedding. enjoy the day.

[Curtis]

I'm more than happy to have people "butt" in, Emma was just the only one I knew on the forum doing large systems or large tanks, anyone else can please chime in, I'm still in the figure this all out stage.

Filtration and heating and the right size pump and the correct size plumbing all has to be finalized for this project. The good news is I have a year to do it.

[Emma Turner]

Hi Curtis,

Unfortunately this is a little tricky for me, as the filtration systems that we use are considered something of a 'company secret' and so I'm not allowed to reveal too much information about them.

The following websites may be useful though:

TMC (Tropical Marine Centre) http://www.tmc-ltd.co.uk/index.htm There is quite a bit of information on the site regarding commercial products and central filtration systems, which may be of use.

Casco also do shop installations and custom built systems, in Europe and the US: http://www.casco-group.com/

Sorry that I can't be of more help on this.

Emma

[Curtis]

So far I have yet to run into anyone that can actually give me good ideas on what I'm doing. I'm starting to feel like I'm one of the few hobbyist out there trying to do such a thing...

[Emma Turner]

So far I have yet to run into anyone that can actually give me good ideas on what I'm doing.

I gave you all the information that I could! We are part of a large chain of stores and I'm simply not permitted to say exactly how our filtration systems work. However, I did spent some of my time explaining the maintenance issues with my main tank at home to you liked you asked.

Have you tried approaching any independent stores near to where you are, and asking for their advice? They are more likely to be able to point you in the direction of US suppliers than I am.

Emma

[Curtis]

I completely understand your delimma and you were helpful as much as you could. I just haven't located someone that I can completely pick the brain of. The only pet stores around here are super-chains and the only other store that may be of some help doesn't do central systems, they have each tank doing their own thing.

I do appreciate your help, I just need to continue to search for someone to pick their brain on how they do things with large 1000+ gallon systems.

I still have a year so I'm probably find the answers I'm looking for, also it isn't all that bad to put together what I think will work and try by experimenting, so far that has been my only main avenue of research.

So far chatting with a few of the vendors that put systems together for people, they have been mostly unhelpful unless I'm purchasing them to do the system for me (completely understandable),... I'm just looking for some experience to draw upon for building out my own central system.

Thanks again for trying to help, and I understand your position and I am not upset about that at all.

Have a great day.

[chefkeith]

For my 400+ gallon, 5 tank water-bridge system, I use 9 canister filters and interlink 2 of the canisters with other tanks. IMO, it's extremely important that each tank can have it's own cycled filters. Now I can easily quarantine individual tanks if I need to. For weekly maintenance I've added some extra plumbing so that I have the ability to backflush each canister. Like Emma, I also use Aquaclear Quickfilter Powerheads to polish the water.

Here's a pic of one of my canister back-flush stations-



My multi-tank water-bridge system uses 4 water-bridges and connects together a 20g refugium, a 190g planted, 85g, 95g, and 90g river tank.
Here's a video of my tanks-

[Curtis]

Thanks for sharing, I do have a few questions...

Your canister backflushing station. The bypass plumbing you setup were for both the intake and output of the cansister. When you need to backflush you add the house to the output to push water through the cansister and you add a hose to another bypass for waste water coming fromthe input of the canister is that the method you use?

With canister backflushing (Which I have never considered until now) Do you have to rip apart the canisters from time to time for a more thorough cleaning? If so how often?

What is a water change like with your 400 bridged tank setup?

Thanks again for sharing... I'm trying to get good ideas and experiences of large tanks and large tank central systems for my upcoming project.

[Emma Turner]

I completely understand your delimma and you were helpful as much as you could. I just haven't located someone that I can completely pick the brain of. The only pet stores around here are super-chains and the only other store that may be of some help doesn't do central systems, they have each tank doing their own thing.

I do appreciate your help, I just need to continue to search for someone to pick their brain on how they do things with large 1000+ gallon systems.

I still have a year so I'm probably find the answers I'm looking for, also it isn't all that bad to put together what I think will work and try by experimenting, so far that has been my only main avenue of research.

So far chatting with a few of the vendors that put systems together for people, they have been mostly unhelpful unless I'm purchasing them to do the system for me (completely understandable),... I'm just looking for some experience to draw upon for building out my own central system.

Thanks again for trying to help, and I understand your position and I am not upset about that at all.

Have a great day.

No worries, Curtis, I hope you find the information you're looking for. If you want to speak to other loach keepers with very large tanks, try asking topline (Brian in Oz) or Jerry Tyler from the US. Bob D in Oz also has a large aquarium, but I haven't seen him on LOL for ages.

Good luck,

Emma

[chefkeith]

For the back-flush, I got the idea from here-
http://www.2cah.com/netmax/diy_projects/vac/vac.shtml

there are 2 ways to do it-


or



I went with the 1st method, but don't have/need the return valve on the left.
With the 1st method, the spraybars need to be under the waters surface during the backflush or it will suck up air. So one thing I had to do was modiify all my spraybars.

My maintenance is not set in stone yet. I added the backflushes 2 months ago.

Each week, I've been backflushing each canister for a 3 minutes. I use my Python hose for this. A few days ago, I completey cleaned 2 canisters on my rivertank because I'm quarantining some clowns there. Those filters were pretty dirty, but mostly because I keep lots of driftwood. If I got rid of the driftwood, it would make a huge difference in how often I'd have to open up and clean the canisters foam sponges. I haven't cleaned my other canisters since I added the backflushes. I imagine they are almost due though because there is lots of driftwood in all my tanks.

I'll probably get rid of most of my driftwood if this situation doesn't improve.
It's all about making things easier.
The biggest chore for me is changing out dirty hoses. I do this about 2 times a year. I have back-up hoses so I can just swap a dirty one for a clean one. I then connect all the dirty hoses together with some hose couplings, then I coil them up and put them all in a bucket. Then I connect a pump to one end of the hoses, add water and bleach to the bucket, then run the pump for about 24 hours. Then I rinse, put the pump on the other side of the hoses, then repeat the cleaning process. I rinse the hoses a few times with fresh water and dechlor.

-sorry gotto run.