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Re: Water changing



Dave Gomberg writes:

> >You get a couple of those one-gallon-per hour drip valves in the garden
>  >department at the department store.  You hang them in the tank, attached 
to 
> a
>  >sprinkler system timer.  You set the thing so it replaces 10% or 20% or
>  >whatever every week, twice a week, again-whatever.  You set up a
>  >self-regulating siphon (goose-neck siphon) in the back of the tank and run
>  >its output to a drain somewhere.  You can automatically top off and get 
> water
>  >changes done at the same time without any effort from you.
>  
>  Has anyone ever done this?  I devised a continuous water purification and 
>  changing system about  25 years ago that involved a heat exchanger and 
then 
>  booster heating incoming tap to about 190F for 6 hours, then cooling it 
via 
>  the heat exchanger and dripping it into the tank using hypodermic needles 
>  stuck into soft tubing.    The idea was to service a fish room with about 
>  100 tanks on a low-maintenance, low-construction-cost basis.
>  
>  Has anyone ever done anything vaguely like this?????

 I knew a fellow in Toronto back in ' 81(now I even talk like an old-timer- 
must be getting ancient) who was into killies.  He had a barrel full of aged 
water and a submersible pump.  the outfow of the pump went to PVC pipes which 
were strung over his tanks.  He had airline from the pipes feeding regular 
airline valves which he had adjusted and timed to a specific number of drops 
per minute.  He nicked one upper corner on the back of all the tanks, and had 
glued some plexiglas contraptions to catch the overflow from the notches in 
the corners of the tanks.  Those catchers led to a drain in the floor.  He 
would turn the pump on for an hour, and every tank in the room got a 10% 
water change.

I don't like drilling or cutting out corners in my tanks, so I decided that 
when I buy a house( probably not do-able for me until the kids all move out) 
and set up a real , official fish room{s}, I will use the irrigation 
controlled release valves for accuracy and simplicity, and goose-neck siphons 
to get the overflow over, rather than through, the back of the tanks.  I'll 
probably build the siphons in a right-triangular shape, so I can tuck them 
into a corner and fish won't be able to avoid the nets by getting behind 
them.  The valves are available in the Northwest at Fred Meyers, and probably 
also at Wally World.  They come in two sizes that I have seen.  One delivers 
either one or two gallons per hour depending on which way the water flows, 
the other delivers either three or four gallons per hour.

SO now there's a thought for you, Dave.  You seem to be the kind of person 
that would spend the time to tinker with a concept like this.  

Bob Dixon
Cichlid Trader List Administrator
http://cichlidtrader.listbot.com