Coral Tank from Canada (1350gal Display Tank)

[nineball]

[nineball]

This is the secret sauce.

[nineball]

[nineball]

This is the end (sort of).......

[ti-christ]

Fantastic project Peter, I am following your thread from Montreal and from the beginning. I dream to see your system when it will be mature in person. I wish you a lot of success.

May be I miss it in previous posts, but did you install a reactor with Bio-pellets from SWC to reduce your phosphate and your nitrate in your system? If not, do you ever consider it? I would like to know your and other people (including Mr. Wilson) about this subjet.

Thank

Chris

[Chago09]

First off, thank you to Peter for bringing me on as the wa wa wa water boy. I loved the challenge and I loved to be apart of this tank in any way.

I consider myself knowledgeable when it comes to water, although am learning when it comes to this reef hobby. I have had a 90 gallon for 4 years and I have a water system similar to Peters for my own tank. Now I have never owned a 1350 gallon tank so I didn’t really understand what would someone need with a tank that size. As some of you recall I was posting that we can bring in a commercial unit which produces 1200gpd and would fill all of Peters storage bins in a couple hours, rather than days. Well 3 people quickly made me look at this in a totally different perspective. First Sarah B made a post saying that she is excited to see me bring commercial elements to the hobby. Then I met Peter, and we entered his fish room ( i.e. technodrome... I am younger then most of you so I use ninja turtle references) and noticed that it was silent. There is a fan that makes a constant hummm and that is it. In the water industry commercial membranes need high pressure which can only be made by booster pumps. I have said before the quietest booster pump in the industry is the loudest we have in our hobby. I can’t have Peter sitting in front of his tank and every so often when the systems draws water he jumps to the sound of a train wreck in the fish room. Then I met Mr. Wilson, who really put it into perspective for me in plain English. “We only need about 20gpd”, so really we don’t need all sorts of equipment to make a lot of water, we just need consistent quality and piece of mind. Because you can perform all the best practices you like, but if your very first foundation which is the water your adding to your tank is not perfect, then its all for nothing. So I went back to redesign.

I came up with a 4 membrane and 6 filter system which some of you recall I posted a few weeks ago. I did this because I still had the mental block of more power!!! plus Peter had two dedicated water lines which I figured I would capitalize on and make two systems. Well I built this and came to Peters to install, and sure enough it would not fit. I only had little wall space to work with, as you can see in the pictures. So I then cut the unit in half and put 2 membranes and one set of filters. I separated the unit over two walls and squeezed everything in where I could. The unit I measured is producing about 250 gallons per day and the ratio is 2 gallons of product for every 3 of waste. I originally had the membranes in line which was producing 1:1, although the TDS was not consistent enough for my liking so I changed them to parallel. Since I have done this the units waste was pushed up a little but the consistency is amazing. I will go through it all step by step as shown in Peters Pictures.

Picture 1 is showing 2 readings of TDS. One post RO and the second post DI. When the RO is running its 3 TDS (I'll explain what I mean by when its running later on) which I am really really happy with.

Picture 2 is just a overall shot of the system. You can see I had no where to add the second system.

Picture 3 is where the magic starts. You can see there is two water lines, I only used one. From here you will see the water is running on a 3/8” line to the pre-filter housings. I used all 20” high quality housings. Cheap housings will lead to one of two problems. Either they crack from pressure or worse they allow bypass. Bypass should be every reefers worst nightmare because if water bypasses the filters, which I believe was happening on Peters original system, it will allow Chlorine to enter the membrane. Everyone knows chlorine will destroy a aquarium if it ever entered the system. Also chlorine will destroy on contact a RO membrane. If the RO is being damaged your TDS will rise and rise, then your DI is getting hit with higher TDS. Once this happens your going to test your water one day and notice your water going in is 10 TDS. Who knows how long its been doing that? those of you with Auto Top Off Systems, do you check your TDS every day? This is why carbon filters are key. To be honest sediment filters you don’t need to look for the newest and best thing, but carbon you do. I chose a simple 5 micron sediment filter and then followed it up with 2 GAC carbon filters from Watts. I choose GAC only because from my experience blocks don’t do well in Southern Ontario. They plugged quickly due to our high iron and I have always had success with GAC. I put two only because its a inexpensive thing to add and it offers so much more piece of mind. If a carbon filter is rated for “x” amount of gallons, its calculated by taking the US average city chlorine amount and dividing into the amount of chlorine that specific filter can absorb. So really if its rated for 5000 gallons, that may not be the case for Peter or for anyone if your chlorine is much higher in your area. Also at different times of the year your city might add more chlorine then usual due to seasonal issues. Carbon has a finite life just like the DI, so having a second one just to make sure doesn’t hurt. I still recommend changing them both at the same time even though the second one doesn’t do much. Its still best practice to change them both and that way you never need to be concerned about chlorine getting to the membrane. I personally believe every aquarist with a tank above 55 gallons should have 20” pre filters with high quality housings and filters. 10” filters and housings are designed for Drinking Water. Our hobby is a middle ground between residential and commercial. We use way to much water and way to much continuous flow for 10” filters. Think about how much water it takes to fill up your glass or water bottle. Just a few seconds and oz. In this hobby we run our RODI for days and hundreds of gallons at a time. A good quality 10” carbon filter for drinking water is rated for about 2000 gallons (most are 1000). So really that is about 250-350 gallons of water changes using standard sold RO units. Because your unit wastes about 5 to 6 gallons for every 1 good one. So lets use 5 gallons of waste, that equals 333 gallons on that filter. That is on a high end filter, most are even worse then that. Now your replacing your filters every 6 months when really they should be much sooner. Now this is fine with drinking water because 333 gallons of drinking water is a lot for a family. That will take 6 months if not longer. I had a 90 gallon for years and just upgraded to a 180, I have used 20” filters all along. These can handle up to 10,000 gallons. With a proper RO that should last you at least 4000 gallons of product water.

Picture 4 is now showing us the membranes. The 3/8” tubing is split, as I said we are running two membranes in parallel. From there I switch the line into 1/4” and they both enter that box like unit. That is a auto shut valve. What this does, is when the water is full in the sump/refuge/storage tank etc no more water will be coming down the product line. So when this happens back pressure will build up in the product lines after the RO but the drain in the RO will flow forever. So this unit senses the back pressure from the product line and causes the source water from the filters to stop from even entering the membrane. This way the drain stops and your not wasting water or your pre filters for nothing. Moving forward each line supplies there membrane. From there each membrane has a drain which makes it way to the sink. Inside the drain line you have flow restrictors and check valves. Flow restrictors basically are what allow pressure to build up inside the membrane to force the water to do the opposite of Osmosis which we call Reverse Osmosis. Without a flow restrictor a RO membrane can not work. Now don’t be fooled by companies who say “ohhh you want 100 gpd from your 50gpd membrane. Just change the flow restrictor to one for 100gpd... its cheaper” Absolutely not!!! A 50 gpd membrane is rated for that for a reason. The materials in which its made of and how its made etc are so for a reason. If you use a higher rating flow restrictor your forcing the membrane to send more water through which will allow much higher TDS and will not allow sufficient flushing of the membrane = replacing faster = serious water quality issues. If you want to upgrade your membrane you need to upgrade all the proper parts. The membranes I used are also from Watts and are producing about 125gpd each.

Picture 5 and 6 I will explain together. We talked about TDS creep before, and I mentioned above I would talk about running 3 TDS later.. TDS creep has two meanings to people. 1. Is cheap membranes while running (producing water for a few minutes non stop) will have different readings of TDS. All will move up or down 1, 2 maybe even 3 ppm. Some jump around 10+ which is poor performance. Sometimes means its a bad quality membrane, sometimes it means a good one has done its time. The second, much more common TDS creep is after a unit has been shut for so long and pressure has built up inside the RO, water will begin to saturate the RO membrane. When your system draws more water all of a sudden you will have a spike in TDS sometimes can be super high like only 60+ TDS. When I set up Peters membranes in line I was getting up to 35 TDS. This alarmed me so I changed it to parallel and now we only get up to about 20ish. This will happen to every single membrane on the planet. This creep will effect the DI resin and will saturate its capability much sooner. A DI resin just like the carbon block has a finite amount of TDS it can saturate. So the higher the TDS coming through the faster you saturate the resin. I will touch more on this in the next step. So to save our DI resin and to reassure our water quality. I have used a Dual TDS controller with a 3 way solenoid valve. I have set the controller to reject any water above 10 TDS. So when the RO starts running again and the TDS creep is coming through the pipes. The controller registers the high TDS and sends a signal to the solenoid. The solenoid will then switch and send that water down the drain rather then allowing it to get to the DI resin. Once the TDS creep has passed and the controller will register a less than 10 TDS again and will switch the solenoid again sending the water to the DI resin. Once this unit starts running it always sits at 3 TDS post RO. This feature also come in handy when no water is being dispensed at all. When all the tanks are full, TDS creep will also come in. You can watch the TDS meter register higher TDS readings. So to prevent the membrane from long periods of saturation which can damage it, once the TDS hits 10 the solenoid will open forcing that poor water out and flushing the membrane again. So every roughly 30 minutes the units spits out a 1/4 gallon of water or so. This way the membrane is always well flushed and well maintained. This will lead to long membrane life, which is not something these membranes should have when we force them to make so much water for such long periods of time.

Picture 7 is the Big Blue!!! This is our DI resin, its a 20” full flow housing meaning its 4.5” wide. This bad boy has a 2350 grains capacity DI resin. This is how much TDS it can handle. The formulas I posted earlier in the thread. Here it is again using 3 TDS.

G = Grains capacity
T = TDS
X = Grains of hardness
Y = Gallon Usage

X = T/17.1 and Y = G / X

X = T / 17.1
X = 3 / 17.1
X = 0.1754

G = Y / X
G = 2350 / 0.1754
G = 13,398

So this calculation in a perfect world shows that the DI resin should last 13,398 gallons of PRODUCT water. Now ideally Peter will have those first few seconds of water below 10 TDS but above 3 so my estimate would be that this DI resin will last easily over 10,000 gallons and that is a pretty modest estimate. That is easily over 1 year of water for Peter. When the TDS creep passes and the solenoid allows water to the DI resin, its literally about 1 or 2 seconds until the TDS returns to 3. Although the climb and drop above 10 can take up to 10 – 15 seconds. That is a long time with high TDS going into the resin. Those of you allowing 30-60 TDS through to your DI can use this formula and see how fast the DI gets saturated. And you better hope that the resin is getting enough contact time to remove so much TDS. Don’t feel like a DI resin is perfect and will remove all remaining TDS. This resin like any needs enough contact time, hence again why I use 20” it allows the water more time in the resin before coming out. Also with less TDS entering the resin its much easier for it to be removed. Having jolts of water with 40 TDS running through a 10” DI resin is tough for any resin, no matter the quality. Its not enough contact time to remove so much TDS.

After working with Peter and Shawn I see that best practice is not about how much water you can make, rather what kind of water you can make. Every reef hobbyist puts huge investments into their system. Financial, physical and emotional. Our live stock can cost enormous amounts of money and a system crash could be the end of the hobby for some. Peter has emphasized many times that this thread is not about how big or fancy his tank is, rather “Best Practices”. I don’t see how having the best skimmer or lights on the market will be of any use to you, when your using poor water quality as your absolute bottom foundation. This is something we should all have fail safe upon fail safe to assure us our auto top offs are only allowing 100% pure water into our systems. That our water changes which are designed to remove bad products are in fact only removing bad and not adding any. I feel this RODI system is best practice and is not only for those of you with 1350 gallon tanks but even the guy with a 90 gallon tank. In reality there is not much difference.

Feel free to ask all the questions you wish. I will answer them the best I can. As Peter has suggested any consumer related questions please respect the thread and PM me.

Drago

[nineball]

Drago, thank you for taking the time to share the logic of this system with us. It is a testament to the quality of this environment that can produce such a fine group of knowledgeable, helpful members that can offer a contribution for the benefit of the serious hobbyist. With a team like Mr.Wilson, Drago, Bros Grimm, the next phase of this evolution should be as interesting and rewarding as the foundation work we have been doing so far.

On behalf of the thread community thank you and welcome to the inner cabinet.

Peter

[nineball]

Originally Posted by ti-christ

Fantastic project Peter, I am following your thread from Montreal and from the beginning. I dream to see your system when it will be mature in person. I wish you a lot of success.

May be I miss it in previous posts, but did you install a reactor with Bio-pellets from SWC to reduce your phosphate and your nitrate in your system? If not, do you ever consider it? I would like to know your and other people (including Mr. Wilson) about this subject.

Thank

Chris

Chris, I will let Mr.Wilson answer your question as he has been the guiding force behind these kinds of decisions............

I did want to make sure you know that there is an invitation to see the tank when you find yourself outside La Belle Province visiting my neck of the woods. Hopefully the permanent sump should be here by then and there might be something to see.

Thank you for your support.

Peter

[Rybren]

Drago,

First off, let me compliment you on a great explanation. You covered not only the what and how, which is where most people stop, but more importantly, you included the why.

I noticed that you only discussed chlorine removal, which I am sure, is great for the Oakville area. However, many municipalities in North America have switched to chloramine. What would you do differently if you had to treat water containing chloramine?

Thank you for your contribution to this great build and communal wealth of knowledge.

Jerry

[mr.wilson]

Originally Posted by Chago09

First off, thank you to Peter for bringing me on as the wa wa wa water boy. I loved the challenge and I loved to be apart of this tank in any way.

I consider myself knowledgeable when it comes to water, although am learning when it comes to this reef hobby. I have had a 90 gallon for 4 years and I have a water system similar to Peters for my own tank. Now I have never owned a 1350 gallon tank so I didn’t really understand what would someone need with a tank that size. As some of you recall I was posting that we can bring in a commercial unit which produces 1200gpd and would fill all of Peters storage bins in a couple hours, rather than days. Well 3 people quickly made me look at this in a totally different perspective. First Sarah B made a post saying that she is excited to see me bring commercial elements to the hobby. Then I met Peter, and we entered his fish room ( i.e. technodrome... I am younger then most of you so I use ninja turtle references) and noticed that it was silent. There is a fan that makes a constant hummm and that is it. In the water industry commercial membranes need high pressure which can only be made by booster pumps. I have said before the quietest booster pump in the industry is the loudest we have in our hobby. I can’t have Peter sitting in front of his tank and every so often when the systems draws water he jumps to the sound of a train wreck in the fish room. Then I met Mr. Wilson, who really put it into perspective for me in plain English. “We only need about 20gpd”, so really we don’t need all sorts of equipment to make a lot of water, we just need consistent quality and piece of mind. Because you can perform all the best practices you like, but if your very first foundation which is the water your adding to your tank is not perfect, then its all for nothing. So I went back to redesign.

I came up with a 4 membrane and 6 filter system which some of you recall I posted a few weeks ago. I did this because I still had the mental block of more power!!! plus Peter had two dedicated water lines which I figured I would capitalize on and make two systems. Well I built this and came to Peters to install, and sure enough it would not fit. I only had little wall space to work with, as you can see in the pictures. So I then cut the unit in half and put 2 membranes and one set of filters. I separated the unit over two walls and squeezed everything in where I could. The unit I measured is producing about 250 gallons per day and the ratio is 2 gallons of product for every 3 of waste. I originally had the membranes in line which was producing 1:1, although the TDS was not consistent enough for my liking so I changed them to parallel. Since I have done this the units waste was pushed up a little but the consistency is amazing. I will go through it all step by step as shown in Peters Pictures.

Picture 1 is showing 2 readings of TDS. One post RO and the second post DI. When the RO is running its 3 TDS (I'll explain what I mean by when its running later on) which I am really really happy with.

Picture 2 is just a overall shot of the system. You can see I had no where to add the second system.

Picture 3 is where the magic starts. You can see there is two water lines, I only used one. From here you will see the water is running on a 3/8” line to the pre-filter housings. I used all 20” high quality housings. Cheap housings will lead to one of two problems. Either they crack from pressure or worse they allow bypass. Bypass should be every reefers worst nightmare because if water bypasses the filters, which I believe was happening on Peters original system, it will allow Chlorine to enter the membrane. Everyone knows chlorine will destroy a aquarium if it ever entered the system. Also chlorine will destroy on contact a RO membrane. If the RO is being damaged your TDS will rise and rise, then your DI is getting hit with higher TDS. Once this happens your going to test your water one day and notice your water going in is 10 TDS. Who knows how long its been doing that? those of you with Auto Top Off Systems, do you check your TDS every day? This is why carbon filters are key. To be honest sediment filters you don’t need to look for the newest and best thing, but carbon you do. I chose a simple 5 micron sediment filter and then followed it up with 2 GAC carbon filters from Watts. I choose GAC only because from my experience blocks don’t do well in Southern Ontario. They plugged quickly due to our high iron and I have always had success with GAC. I put two only because its a inexpensive thing to add and it offers so much more piece of mind. If a carbon filter is rated for “x” amount of gallons, its calculated by taking the US average city chlorine amount and dividing into the amount of chlorine that specific filter can absorb. So really if its rated for 5000 gallons, that may not be the case for Peter or for anyone if your chlorine is much higher in your area. Also at different times of the year your city might add more chlorine then usual due to seasonal issues. Carbon has a finite life just like the DI, so having a second one just to make sure doesn’t hurt. I still recommend changing them both at the same time even though the second one doesn’t do much. Its still best practice to change them both and that way you never need to be concerned about chlorine getting to the membrane. I personally believe every aquarist with a tank above 55 gallons should have 20” pre filters with high quality housings and filters. 10” filters and housings are designed for Drinking Water. Our hobby is a middle ground between residential and commercial. We use way to much water and way to much continuous flow for 10” filters. Think about how much water it takes to fill up your glass or water bottle. Just a few seconds and oz. In this hobby we run our RODI for days and hundreds of gallons at a time. A good quality 10” carbon filter for drinking water is rated for about 2000 gallons (most are 1000). So really that is about 250-350 gallons of water changes using standard sold RO units. Because your unit wastes about 5 to 6 gallons for every 1 good one. So lets use 5 gallons of waste, that equals 333 gallons on that filter. That is on a high end filter, most are even worse then that. Now your replacing your filters every 6 months when really they should be much sooner. Now this is fine with drinking water because 333 gallons of drinking water is a lot for a family. That will take 6 months if not longer. I had a 90 gallon for years and just upgraded to a 180, I have used 20” filters all along. These can handle up to 10,000 gallons. With a proper RO that should last you at least 4000 gallons of product water.

Picture 4 is now showing us the membranes. The 3/8” tubing is split, as I said we are running two membranes in parallel. From there I switch the line into 1/4” and they both enter that box like unit. That is a auto shut valve. What this does, is when the water is full in the sump/refuge/storage tank etc no more water will be coming down the product line. So when this happens back pressure will build up in the product lines after the RO but the drain in the RO will flow forever. So this unit senses the back pressure from the product line and causes the source water from the filters to stop from even entering the membrane. This way the drain stops and your not wasting water or your pre filters for nothing. Moving forward each line supplies there membrane. From there each membrane has a drain which makes it way to the sink. Inside the drain line you have flow restrictors and check valves. Flow restrictors basically are what allow pressure to build up inside the membrane to force the water to do the opposite of Osmosis which we call Reverse Osmosis. Without a flow restrictor a RO membrane can not work. Now don’t be fooled by companies who say “ohhh you want 100 gpd from your 50gpd membrane. Just change the flow restrictor to one for 100gpd... its cheaper” Absolutely not!!! A 50 gpd membrane is rated for that for a reason. The materials in which its made of and how its made etc are so for a reason. If you use a higher rating flow restrictor your forcing the membrane to send more water through which will allow much higher TDS and will not allow sufficient flushing of the membrane = replacing faster = serious water quality issues. If you want to upgrade your membrane you need to upgrade all the proper parts. The membranes I used are also from Watts and are producing about 125gpd each.

Picture 5 and 6 I will explain together. We talked about TDS creep before, and I mentioned above I would talk about running 3 TDS later.. TDS creep has two meanings to people. 1. Is cheap membranes while running (producing water for a few minutes non stop) will have different readings of TDS. All will move up or down 1, 2 maybe even 3 ppm. Some jump around 10+ which is poor performance. Sometimes means its a bad quality membrane, sometimes it means a good one has done its time. The second, much more common TDS creep is after a unit has been shut for so long and pressure has built up inside the RO, water will begin to saturate the RO membrane. When your system draws more water all of a sudden you will have a spike in TDS sometimes can be super high like only 60+ TDS. When I set up Peters membranes in line I was getting up to 35 TDS. This alarmed me so I changed it to parallel and now we only get up to about 20ish. This will happen to every single membrane on the planet. This creep will effect the DI resin and will saturate its capability much sooner. A DI resin just like the carbon block has a finite amount of TDS it can saturate. So the higher the TDS coming through the faster you saturate the resin. I will touch more on this in the next step. So to save our DI resin and to reassure our water quality. I have used a Dual TDS controller with a 3 way solenoid valve. I have set the controller to reject any water above 10 TDS. So when the RO starts running again and the TDS creep is coming through the pipes. The controller registers the high TDS and sends a signal to the solenoid. The solenoid will then switch and send that water down the drain rather then allowing it to get to the DI resin. Once the TDS creep has passed and the controller will register a less than 10 TDS again and will switch the solenoid again sending the water to the DI resin. Once this unit starts running it always sits at 3 TDS post RO. This feature also come in handy when no water is being dispensed at all. When all the tanks are full, TDS creep will also come in. You can watch the TDS meter register higher TDS readings. So to prevent the membrane from long periods of saturation which can damage it, once the TDS hits 10 the solenoid will open forcing that poor water out and flushing the membrane again. So every roughly 30 minutes the units spits out a 1/4 gallon of water or so. This way the membrane is always well flushed and well maintained. This will lead to long membrane life, which is not something these membranes should have when we force them to make so much water for such long periods of time.

Picture 7 is the Big Blue!!! This is our DI resin, its a 20” full flow housing meaning its 4.5” wide. This bad boy has a 2350 grains capacity DI resin. This is how much TDS it can handle. The formulas I posted earlier in the thread. Here it is again using 3 TDS.

G = Grains capacity
T = TDS
X = Grains of hardness
Y = Gallon Usage

X = T/17.1 and Y = G / X

X = T / 17.1
X = 3 / 17.1
X = 0.1754

G = Y / X
G = 2350 / 0.1754
G = 13,398

So this calculation in a perfect world shows that the DI resin should last 13,398 gallons of PRODUCT water. Now ideally Peter will have those first few seconds of water below 10 TDS but above 3 so my estimate would be that this DI resin will last easily over 10,000 gallons and that is a pretty modest estimate. That is easily over 1 year of water for Peter. When the TDS creep passes and the solenoid allows water to the DI resin, its literally about 1 or 2 seconds until the TDS returns to 3. Although the climb and drop above 10 can take up to 10 – 15 seconds. That is a long time with high TDS going into the resin. Those of you allowing 30-60 TDS through to your DI can use this formula and see how fast the DI gets saturated. And you better hope that the resin is getting enough contact time to remove so much TDS. Don’t feel like a DI resin is perfect and will remove all remaining TDS. This resin like any needs enough contact time, hence again why I use 20” it allows the water more time in the resin before coming out. Also with less TDS entering the resin its much easier for it to be removed. Having jolts of water with 40 TDS running through a 10” DI resin is tough for any resin, no matter the quality. Its not enough contact time to remove so much TDS.

After working with Peter and Shawn I see that best practice is not about how much water you can make, rather what kind of water you can make. Every reef hobbyist puts huge investments into their system. Financial, physical and emotional. Our live stock can cost enormous amounts of money and a system crash could be the end of the hobby for some. Peter has emphasized many times that this thread is not about how big or fancy his tank is, rather “Best Practices”. I don’t see how having the best skimmer or lights on the market will be of any use to you, when your using poor water quality as your absolute bottom foundation. This is something we should all have fail safe upon fail safe to assure us our auto top offs are only allowing 100% pure water into our systems. That our water changes which are designed to remove bad products are in fact only removing bad and not adding any. I feel this RODI system is best practice and is not only for those of you with 1350 gallon tanks but even the guy with a 90 gallon tank. In reality there is not much difference.

Feel free to ask all the questions you wish. I will answer them the best I can. As Peter has suggested any consumer related questions please respect the thread and PM me.

Drago

Drago is absolutely right, your water is only as good as what you start out with. While creating 0 TDS water is not difficult, doing so efficiently and reliably is not so easy. We are balancing the cost of replacement filters, and DI resin, with water heating costs and the cost of the (waste) water itself.

We are not storing product water, as it is directly added to top-off sumps or the saltwater reservoirs. This way we know our "hungry" RO/DI water will not collect chemicals or gases form the air or holding containers.

Getting past the GPD numbers is the first step to a successful design. I have the same problem when I look at new cars; they talk about better fuel economy and in the same breath tell me it has 350 HP and enough torque to pull six more cars behind it. I'm 42 so I don't need any more than the 100 HP it takes me to safely merge with traffic on the highway, and I'm not pulling any trailers (I'm not that old yet ). What I want is to stop at the pumps less often so I can go farther with my 100 HP. Drago has done great job, in offering a method of maximizing efficiency with his three way solenoid bypass that redirects high TDS water until it is low enough to go through the DI resin without depleting it too much.

The other key design feature is the large LED controller. I have been using those tiny DC meters that you need to manually switch on and toggle between post RO and post DI readings. These units are just good enough to get by, but by no means a best practice. Time and TDS creeps up on us and before you know it, it's been two months since you checked your TDS. This oversight can lead to nutrient build-up, which can cause coral mortality and nuisance algae outbreaks.

The mark of a good design is the ability to scale it up or down. Whether it's DC pumps, lighting systems, or a RO/DI system, they can all adapt the same principals we are using here, just scaled down according to the size of your aquarium and wallet.

[mr.wilson]

Originally Posted by Rybren

Drago,

First off, let me compliment you on a great explanation. You covered not only the what and how, which is where most people stop, but more importantly, you included the why.

I noticed that you only discussed chlorine removal, which I am sure, is great for the Oakville area. However, many municipalities in North America have switched to chloramine. What would you do differently if you had to treat water containing chloramine?

You also have the option of manually adding a product like SeaChem Prime to the product water.

Thank you for your contribution to this great build and communal wealth of knowledge.

Jerry

I think chloramine is used everywhere now. Ammonia is not removed by carbon or reverse osmosis. You could use a canister of zeolite or polyfilters but In my opinion, the amount of ammonia in municipal water is low enough to be readily consumed by nitrifying bacteria in holding tanks and in the aquarium system itself. You could install an inline biofilter with aragonite in it to act as a biological filter. It will also slowly dissolve the aragonite to re-mineralize and stabilize the pure product water.

The good news is you can test for ammonia with aquarium test kits, so it isn't as mysterious as other "bad things" that may show up in our water. In some areas, a UV sterilizer is needed to remove bacteria and even algae. If you are on well water, a UV sterilizer is a must. Your local government agency will test your tap water for free.

I'm sure Drago has some other suggestions and observations.

[mr.wilson]

Originally Posted by ti-christ

Fantastic project Peter, I am following your thread from Montreal and from the beginning. I dream to see your system when it will be mature in person. I wish you a lot of success.

May be I miss it in previous posts, but did you install a reactor with Bio-pellets from SWC to reduce your phosphate and your nitrate in your system? If not, do you ever consider it? I would like to know your and other people (including Mr. Wilson) about this subjet.

Thank

Chris

We are using NP Biopellets from the Netherlands in fluidized media reactors by Skimz. We will have a better idea if they are working once we get a decent bio-load. The ones from SWC are pretty much the same thing.

[mr.wilson]

Originally Posted by elijaher

That is one nice drawing.

Thanks. I find that the drawing is the most important part of the thought process for me. It's the easiest way to start thinking in 3D. You can spot conflict and viable solutions before you buy anything. One of these days I will learn a 3D CAD program, perhaps Sketch up because it's free and easy to use.

Once you do a few drawings, you start building a nice list of symbols you can utilize in your next project. I used spider symbols for the rotifers, feathers for brine shrimp, and scorpions for mysis shrimp I should put the symbols online for free download some day as a resource. If others uploaded their drawings we could have a digital warehouse of aquarium designs and symbols/vectors.

I always wanted to create one of those "build your aquarium" graphics programs like the ones they use for cars. You could start out with a basic design that you could pick by looking at examples and following a brief questionnaire/flowchart; then you could pick your equipment according to your needs and budget. The program would spot conflicts, recommend changes and provide cost, where to buy, and energy consumption etc. Such a program could use existing calculators for plumbing head loss and drain volume to help you design a fool proof system. Little things like adding two 45˚ elbows instead of a 90 or adding a 6" spa hose stress relief coupling can be suggested to improve upon the users design. At the click on a button you could find out exactly how much flow you would gain by increasing your return line to 1.5" from 1". On the design end, you could switch from a modern stand to traditional with a mouse click. From an ergonomic angle, you could see the difference between a 42" and 34" tall stand. It wouldn't take much to put something like that together and everyone from beginner to professional can benefit from it.

[Chago09]

Originally Posted by Rybren

Drago,

First off, let me compliment you on a great explanation. You covered not only the what and how, which is where most people stop, but more importantly, you included the why.

I noticed that you only discussed chlorine removal, which I am sure, is great for the Oakville area. However, many municipalities in North America have switched to chloramine. What would you do differently if you had to treat water containing chloramine?

Thank you for your contribution to this great build and communal wealth of knowledge.

Jerry

Jerry I couldn't agree more with the "why" factor. I have told Mr. wilson and Peter both 100 times. I hate when on reef threads people simply tell me what to do without any explaination as to why. There is a Canadian website which you probably know of, I have been removed from twice because I simply questioned one of the "higher ups" logic. I hate that attitude of listen the big cheese said you need this and thats it you need it. If you bother questioning why your insulting them. Peter has made this thread the exact opposite. This is about best practice and everyones input on that. Not everything in Peters set up is the most expensive or "best" one accoring to marketers. He has taken what works best from testing and gathering information from manufacturers, and people on this thread. You should see his equipment grave yard

As for the chloramine, I can't thank you enough for bringing that up. Chloramine is basically a mixture of chlorine and ammonia. It is a much more powerful mixture and is better at staying free floating. A lot of people have argued chloramine can't be removed by the same methods as chlorine. Although it has been proven that it can. The only problem with chloramine is it requires a longer contact time with media. It will also saturate the media faster. Chloramine is a problem for almost everyone since there are not to many cities who don't use chloramine by now. This is even more important to have 20" filters. Again 20" filters allow longer contact time for the chloramine to be removed by the carbon.

What makes chloramine more dangerous then chlorine for us hobbyists is that chlorine will actually evaporate for water. So if for whatever reason a glass of tap water fell into your tank. The chlorine thats in their would cause whatever havoc that it would, then would stop because it would eventually break down and evaporate. Chloramine is much more stubborn and will stick around for a long time. Thats why cities are using it because it stays in the water column a lot longer in the cities pipes. You don't want a drop of this stuff in your tank. I hope I answered that for you.

[Chago09]

Originally Posted by mr.wilson

I think chloramine is used everywhere now. Ammonia is not removed by carbon or reverse osmosis. You could use a canister of zeolite or polyfilters but In my opinion, the amount of ammonia in municipal water is low enough to be readily consumed by nitrifying bacteria in holding tanks and in the aquarium system itself. You could install an inline biofilter with aragonite in it to act as a biological filter. It will also slowly dissolve the aragonite to re-mineralize and stabilize the pure product water.

The good news is you can test for ammonia with aquarium test kits, so it isn't as mysterious as other "bad things" that may show up in our water. In some areas, a UV sterilizer is needed to remove bacteria and even algae. If you are on well water, a UV sterilizer is a must. Your local government agency will test your tap water for free.

I'm sure Drago has some other suggestions and observations.

Thats a good point Mr. Wilson, when chloramine is removed, ammonia is released. This can be removed with zeolite like suggested, although a RO membrane will remove ammonia. If you test your RODI there should not be any ammonia.

I also forgot to mention, a carbon block is almost useless with chloramine. Simply not enough contact time. Thats why I always recomend using GAC.

[killerbee181]

Chago thanks for the explanation i kinda got lost trying to follow the tubes there but your explanation laid it all out for me thank you. Question you said you are producing 2 gallons of clean and dumping 3. Wanted to know how you where able to do this. I believe the RO membranes we normally us make 1 gallon and dump 4. Are you using a different type of membrane or is there something in the plumbing that makes it more efficient?
Also the 20" housing will they screw onto the 10" housing base or will everything have to be rebuilt if i was to change?
And last where can i get the tds controller and the 3 way solenoid you are using and about how much do they run?
And great job on the build everything looks great!
Thanks,
Terry

[Chago09]

Originally Posted by killerbee181

Chago thanks for the explanation i kinda got lost trying to follow the tubes there but your explanation laid it all out for me thank you. Question you said you are producing 2 gallons of clean and dumping 3. Wanted to know how you where able to do this. I believe the RO membranes we normally us make 1 gallon and dump 4. Are you using a different type of membrane or is there something in the plumbing that makes it more efficient?
Also the 20" housing will they screw onto the 10" housing base or will everything have to be rebuilt if i was to change?
And last where can i get the tds controller and the 3 way solenoid you are using and about how much do they run?
And great job on the build everything looks great!
Thanks,
Terry

Killerbee I would love to tell you I have this secret weapon, although its a combination of a million factors. To improve rejection water temperature is key so for most you can't control this. Peter has a mixer installed in his plumbing which is a huge bonus. Also tap water quality will change this. An extremley high TDS or hard water will slow down the membranes production and create more waste. Also water pressure is a another huge factor. Peter had all of the above which really helped on production amount.

The best ways you can improve the production and what I have done to do this, is the quality of materials in the unit. Again back to the 20" housings with high quality filters and 3/8" tubing. This will allow all the pressure to be maintained through the pre filters and into the membrane. The higher the pressure (to an extent) the better the production. Also using good quality housings, membranes and even flow restrictors will all help. The team of membrane housing, membrane and flow restrictor are key to success. I only use (I think watts should pay me for all these advertisements for them) watts high end line of products. People may say a housing is a housing, or a membrane is a membrane. Using quality products which are designed and used in commercial applications are like comparing T5 to T5HO.

The housing I believe will thread, to be honest I have never tried. Reason being I always buy the entire housing.

As for all your consumer questions I will PM you. And for anyone interested in the parts, controllers etc. Please PM me instead of posting on the thread. I believe in Peters best practice and would love to build units and sell parts to all the members, but please out of respect for the thread rules contact me through PM.

Drago

[killerbee181]

thank you for the response and i'll wait for your pm!
Peter you should consolidate this thread once your done with your tank and you'll be able to make a book out of it. Sadly it will be better then any already out there. There's more info in this one thread then most of RC lol.
Excellent job you guys!!!
Terry

[ransomed4ever]

Chago, On my Ro unit I added an output post ro membrane/ pre DI resin, to use for drinking water, and to test tds after the membrane. My question is when I want to make RO DI water would running a 1/4 - 1/2 gallon from the post membrane/pre DI output before allowing the water to go through the DI resin have a similar effect as the solenoid you installed?

[killerbee181]

Originally Posted by ransomed4ever

Chago, On my Ro unit I added an output post ro membrane/ pre DI resin, to use for drinking water, and to test tds after the membrane. My question is when I want to make RO DI water would running a 1/4 - 1/2 gallon from the post membrane/pre DI output before allowing the water to go through the DI resin have a similar effect as the solenoid you installed?

that is what i currently do with mine before every batch of water i make and i have noticed my DI resin last about twice as long. Only problem i have is i sometime forget to turn it off and leave it flushing lol. I have to stop trying to do to many things at one time lol.
Terry

[ransomed4ever]

That's good to know. The initial TDS spike must be why my DI seems to go fast, because when I test a few cups of water post RO but pre DI it only tests at a 2 or 3, but my DI seems to exhaust pretty quickly. I think I'll run a little off before I make any water from now on.

[dave.m]

I was having a bit of trouble understanding the final configuration from Peter's photos, so I put together a rough sketch. I hope this will be helpful to other members, as well. Much thanks to Drago for clarifying several points for me along the way.



Dave.M

[ransomed4ever]

another question for Chago is how do you run the GAC? is it in a canister like one of the refillable DI canisters, or is there some other way you do it?

[killerbee181]

Originally Posted by dave.m

I was having a bit of trouble understanding the final configuration from Peter's photos, so I put together a rough sketch. I hope this will be helpful to other members, as well. Much thanks to Drago for clarifying several points for me along the way.



Dave.M

looks good except i believe the 3 way solenoid is before the DI
nice diagram though sure makes it alot easier to follow that way!
Terry

[Chago09]

Originally Posted by ransomed4ever

Chago, On my Ro unit I added an output post ro membrane/ pre DI resin, to use for drinking water, and to test tds after the membrane. My question is when I want to make RO DI water would running a 1/4 - 1/2 gallon from the post membrane/pre DI output before allowing the water to go through the DI resin have a similar effect as the solenoid you installed?

yes it would as long as you test the water. The solenoid and controller work for people who are using auto top offs. If you have a manual system then yes you can control this yourself. My system is all automatic for people using auto top offs.