Randy's Tank and Learn Thread

[Miami Reef]

Oddly I don't like honey, perhaps it's done some psychological damage. I may be able to make a claim. Do you think it would be a good carbon dosing material?, lol.

Some Taiwan dude used to dose milk and honey to his acro tank. I can find the RC post. :grinning-face-with-sweat:

I actually came on here tonight because I wanted to show my bird lol

He decided to hang by one talon for some reason.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Beautiful bird!

I remember the milk dosing. It seem to have not caught on, and it’s not something I’d recommend.

Honey as an organic carbon dose is likely fine. It’s mostly sucrose, and the other components are unlikely to have much effect. Expensive compared to other things, however.

 

[Miami Reef]

I nearly decided to just close it back up and hope she got out, but decided that could be a very poor decision.

Why was that a very poor decision? Why do you put queens in cages?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Why was that a very poor decision? Why do you put queens in cages?

Would have been a poor decision if she had not gotten out. She cannot lay eggs and such without roaming the hive.

They are in cages in new hives to give time for the workers to bond to her (they are typically not raised together for new hives) and to allow all of them to be comfortable in the new setting so she is less likely to just fly away with everyone following.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Source Water Purification

For my refugium alone I used tap water, and then for the tank system fill, new RO/DI and new salt water, I used an RO Buddie with DI. I also have an extra RO Buddie DI, so i will at least use that until it runs out, maybe longer.

But I'm thinking of going just an RO only route. That will cut down chlorine, chloramine, and most ions in the water by a significant factor (certainly dropped by >10x for most except ammonia and silicate).

As I look at the local water quality report (below), it's quite good, with the exception of silicate, and since I will probably dose silicate anyway, this may be a win-win.

here's a recent water quality set of data (Feb 2025). The MWRA does quite an extensive analysis. Nothing looks like a problem to me.

The column to look at is Carrol Water treated. The ammonia is from chloramine.

Thoughts?

 

[Kilman805]

From my point of view, the reverse osmosis step is the expensive one in terms of wasted water and time. If the source water isn’t bad and the RO is operating properly then the DI resin lasts quite a while and isn’t expensive in the scheme of everything else. Then you know with good certainty what’s in your water.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

From my point of view, the reverse osmosis step is the expensive one in terms of wasted water and time. If the source water isn’t bad and the RO is operating properly then the DI resin lasts quite a while and isn’t expensive in the scheme of everything else. Then you know with good certainty what’s in your water.

Thanks. :)

The DI not costing a lot is a fair point. I’m just not sure it does anything useful in my situation. And if I have to dose silicate, then it’s causing more work.

Time is not a concern for me in making ro/di. I collect 100 gallons at a time, and the Tunze ro controller will shut it off if I forget (more on that setup later).

I do agree there’s a large water usage, but I’d use no more or less by using ro/di vs ro only. :)

 

[rtparty]

Thanks. :)

The DI not costing a lot is a fair point. I’m just not sure it does anything useful in my situation. And if I have to dose silicate, then it’s causing more work.

Time is not a concern for me in making ro/di. I collect 100 gallons at a time, and the Tunze ro controller will shut it off if I forget (more on that setup later).

I do agree there’s a large water usage, but I’d use no more or less by using ro/di vs ro only. :)

If the sediment, carbon blocks, and RO remove chlorine, ammonia, and other unwanted elements….is DI necessary for most of us?

What elements would you worry about getting past the RO membrane that DI takes care of? If the carbon blocks exhaust and ammonia gets past, will the DI grab it?

 

[Kilman805]

I guess the point for me is that it costs very little extra to use rodi water. You may need to dose silicates, but then you are doing that intentionally. If you use RO then you are inadvertently dosing anything that passes the RO membrane. I don’t see any big benefit to skipping the DI step given the added uncertainty.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

If the sediment, carbon blocks, and RO remove chlorine, ammonia, and other unwanted elements….is DI necessary for most of us?

What elements would you worry about getting past the RO membrane that DI takes care of? If the carbon blocks exhaust and ammonia gets past, will the DI grab it?

Part of my reason for pursuing this is to show that I think a lot of folks go overkill on ro/di.

There will be some ammonia getting through. I don’t think the carbon will bind much of it, if any. In my situation, even if it all did get through (it won’t) then there would be 0.4 ppm ammonia in the top off and awc water.

If I use 1% daily for AWC and maybe evaporate 2% daily, that adds 0.03 x .4 ppm = 0.012 ppm ammonia daily. I expect that is similar to a very small fish. In nitrate terms it’s about 0.05 ppm per day, which both as ammonia and nitrate seems to low to be significant.

Some will argue that chloramine will get through the ro buddie. I’ve not yet detected it with the sensitive test strips I got (I think they can detect 0.02 ppm total chlorine). But I will periodically check that. Replacing the carbon will deal with that, if it happens before the cartridge clogs.

I may plan to flush the pipes by running a nearby faucet for a few min before starting the ro buddie when not using a di. The primary reason in my case is that the pipes are copper and the faucet is brass. Water sitting in copper pipes for an extended period will raise copper, and might possibly raise it high enough that even the ro wont remove enough to be optimal.

Let’s look at copper math. Suppose there is a whopping 2 ppm in the pipes. That’s above the allowed epa limit and very few homes ever hit that. In our area, more than 90% are below 100 ppb. Suppose we start at the huge 2 ppm and the ro membrane removes 95%, a conservative estimate:

Membrane Rejection Levels

Nominal Rejection Characteristics of Thin Film Composite Reverse Osmosis Membranes

www.watertreatmentguide.com

Then the product water will contain 100 ppb. That’s clearly too much for a 100% water change. It may or may not be too much for 1% daily AWC. That adds 1 ppb per day.


Let’s compare it to TM K+. It contains 465 ppb copper. Add 2 mL per 100 L (max dose) then that adds 0.01 ppb per day.

Thus, this worst case scenario is adding 10x the copper in TM A and K.

That's the reason to flush the pipes, and almost certainly will bring it down to well below the TM addition.

But copper is my primary concern for folks doing this.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I guess the point for me is that it costs very little extra to use rodi water. You may need to dose silicates, but then you are doing that intentionally. If you use RO then you are inadvertently dosing anything that passes the RO membrane. I don’t see any big benefit to skipping the DI step given the added uncertainty.

Ok. I’m just trying to see what the actual problem would or could be, as opposed to a theoretical concern, since I do know what is in the tap water. :)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

FWIW, it would be pretty simple to get a quality icp on both the tank, and on some ro only water after the tank has been running for a bit. Then I could clearly know if there was any concern from the ro only. :)

 

[jonelder68]

FWIW, it would be pretty simple to get a quality icp on both the tank, and on some ro only water after the tank has been running for a bit. Then I could clearly know if there was any concern from the ro only. :)

I don’t think you’ll remove any chloramines through RO only. I like your idea though…my dad was a civil water engineer for 50 years (retired recently). Built most the water treatment plants throughout the country. Here in the suburbs of Kansas City our water is very good. He’s constantly arguing or more confused on why I strip the water pure to just add back a lot of the chemicals. He’s no marine biologist so maybe doesn’t fully understand what a reef tank needs vs what’s toxic to organisms in our reefs. I’ll have to follow up with him on this. Last we were discussing using rain water and setting up something to treat it to be safe to use.

 

[Kilman805]

FWIW, it would be pretty simple to get a quality icp on both the tank, and on some ro only water after the tank has been running for a bit. Then I could clearly know if there was any concern from the ro only. :)

True. But for the cost of ICP you could just use the DI stage. I don’t understand the cost-benefit reasoning. I don’t know about your local water, but here it can vary by season and year to year.

 

[rtparty]

“Acclimated” carbon blocks will remove ammonia. Not completely but a good chunk. BRS has a good video talking about it all

 

[jerrberryjerr]

Good thoughts. Sounds well covered. I’m a bit more focused on this than most people but even when my work schedule changes and I am back to a normal life, I think I’ll maintain my conservative approach because I know I will have periods of apathy and I also like not worrying at all when we take a trip.

Consider individual equipment failures too. Full loss of power might be rare but pumps stopping, leaks forming, etc have all happened. I am a bit obsessive about evaluating and mitigating the consequence of failure. It’s a lesson, learned mostly the heard way, that will stay with me for the remainder of my reef keeping days.

One last thing and I’ll stop. AWC…I had a dosing pump get wildly out of calibration because I bumped the tubing partially off the roller. I was removing more water than I was replacing and the ATO was making up the difference, for months and months. My reservoirs were large so I didn’t notice until I ran out of new SW. this corresponded with a period of apathy or other priorities. Because I wasn’t doing any manual water changes, I was not checking tank salinity. The consequences were bad. I won’t have AWC system again without a salinity/conductivity monitor or a routine of regularly checking tank salinity manually (which is not that reliable long term because I am human).

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I don’t think you’ll remove any chloramines through RO only. I like your idea though…my dad was a civil water engineer for 50 years (retired recently). Built most the water treatment plants throughout the country. Here in the suburbs of Kansas City our water is very good. He’s constantly arguing or more confused on why I strip the water pure to just add back a lot of the chemicals. He’s no marine biologist so maybe doesn’t fully understand what a reef tank needs vs what’s toxic to organisms in our reefs. I’ll have to follow up with him on this. Last we were discussing using rain water and setting up something to treat it to be safe to use.

The carbon blocks of ro systems break chloramine into chloride and ammonia. The chloride and ammonia are not entirely removed, but the chloramine is no longer active as a disinfectant. :)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

True. But for the cost of ICP you could just use the DI stage. I don’t understand the cost-benefit reasoning. I don’t know about your local water, but here it can vary by season and year to year.

Both my tank and this thread have many purposes, one of which is learning. I certainly understand that the most conservative approach is to use only ro/di, and I did so for 20 years on my old tank. If done properly, it can never go wrong. I would advise anyone to use it, unless they have good knowledge of what is in their water and what impact it might have.

But if, as I suspect, my tank and some others can use ro only, then that is a useful thing to learn and for others to consider. Aside from the possibility of copper from my own pipes, nothing in the water report is even close to concerning to me. :)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

“Acclimated” carbon blocks will remove ammonia. Not completely but a good chunk. BRS has a good video talking about it all

Thanks, I’ll check it out! :)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Refugium Lighting

Looks like I need to change my refugium lighting setup. In Brute can #1, the bubbles coming into the can from the water coming down from the display have cause enough salt spray from popping that the led bulb shorted and tripped the gfi.

Another lesson that I already knew but ignored, spread out the plugs in gfi in a way that there’s not important things tripping each other. In this case, the ATO also went out. Rinsing the bulb in tap water and placing it on a dehumidifier to dry seems to have fixed it.

I decided that, at least temporarily, I can put a glass sheet between the bulb and the spray. It would work, but at least in Brute 1 the spray is already visibly getting into the glass (in 30 min).

Long term, at least in Brute 1, I may need floss or something to trap bubbles. I’m open to suggestions of how to stop bubbles. :)