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  1. #101
    Senior Member Rank = Adult Champion Alburglar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paul burt View Post
    Just my thoughts and nothing more but doesn’t the above suggest that you’d be far better off harvesting free rain water and trickling that in, I know there can be issues with a lower ph in rain water compared to tap water but as I found myself a three stage dechlorinor is almost totally ineffective unless the water passes through it at almost a drip into the pond speed and that’s when the cartridges are new but then again there’s a whole other argument about not doing water changes and having plants in the pond etc, is that old school vs new school I wonder?
    Yes you could buffer rainwater but there's more to it than that and I suspect that collecting it is the issue l. I used to use it for my various aquariums, over the years. A water butt off the main roof, but it used to cause algae blooms. Diatoms and black beard algae over all the wood in the tank.
    Perhaps it collects it off the roof, along with moss and bird crap I suppose? But the collected water consistently had double figure nitrates 10 or more.
    So no good for my 500L Nile puffer fish tank, and only just ok for my Snake heads if I watched / maintained the PH. This was heavily planted with water lettuce which fed on the nitrates. I wouldn't have ever considered using it for a marine tank. So in the end, at that scale, dechlorination of tap water was the better option.
    Last edited by Alburglar; 19-11-2024 at 10:57 AM.
    2660 Gallons. 4" Bottom Drain and Skimmer. Draco Solum 16 Drum. Anoxic Filtration. Air lift returns.

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  3. #102
    Senior Member Rank = Adult Champion Alburglar's Avatar
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    Another anecdote, however, was from my youth. My mum used to change the water on a fresh water plastic 'bowl' aquarium my brother had languishing in his bedroom. It had white cloud mountain minnows and hillstream loaches. She used to pick the whole bowl up and tip the water out down the sink and one day lost a minnow down the plug hole.
    They had an old Victorian system and water butt that used to collect the sink and bath water that they watered the plants with. Six months later, there was the minnow alive and well, a little washed out though, no pun intended.

    The fish are Coldwater / subtropical, so don't need heat but can't survive the lower temps. So he survived in a cold soap scum and toothpaste bath for half a year, but not 10 minutes in a bucket of acidic rain water. Which she tried to put the fish in once during a 'big clean', after learning her lesson about the tipping method.
    -yes none of us new what we were doing back then.

    Which sort of puts rainwater quite low down the 'ideal for fish' scales
    Last edited by Alburglar; 19-11-2024 at 11:10 AM.
    2660 Gallons. 4" Bottom Drain and Skimmer. Draco Solum 16 Drum. Anoxic Filtration. Air lift returns.

  4. #103
    Senior Member Rank = Adult Champion Alburglar's Avatar
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    ...I was no better by the way. At 11 years old I was trying to keep bettas and angel fish and red tailed sharks and neons all together in a 30L tank. Not once did the bloke in the fish shop asked me what fish I was keeping, how big was the tank etc,.but I digress.
    2660 Gallons. 4" Bottom Drain and Skimmer. Draco Solum 16 Drum. Anoxic Filtration. Air lift returns.

  5. #104
    I get that but here’s the thing, 30-40 years ago people kept koi very successfully in semi natural ponds with plenty of plants, relied on rain water off the garden to keep em full etc and never did water changes, never had a trickle in, basically never needed any sort of dechlorination as they never used tap water, so what’s changed? not the fish that’s for sure.

  6. #105
    Senior Member Rank = Kyusai big h's Avatar
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    30/ 40 years ago there were more mortalities for sure in koi ponds , but in my experience the koikeepers who do everything wrong get the right results so are they wrong

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  8. #106
    Senior Member Rank = Yonsai ABN67's Avatar
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    I remember my parents pond when I was a kid so probably nearer 50 years ago, I remember thinking where are the fish because we could never see them in the murky water, if I remember right they only cleaned it out maybe once or twice a year and within a week or 2 it was back to being a murky puddle again, the fish lived for years though so who knows, maybe they were more hardy back then , but I must add I do very much prefer the gin clear water you get from modern filtration etc

  9. #107
    I actually work in the water industry but only as a driver/crane operator, the next time I’m on a clean water site I’m going to make some enquiries, tap water after all, is basically rain water that’s been through a cleansing process, see if I can find out what that process is and why the water out of the tap has a far higher ph etc, I know it goes through carbon filters as a last stage purifier on some sites.
    surely there’s got to be a way of harvesting free water and putting it through a similar process on a very small scale so it’s fit for the pond?


  10. #108
    Senior Member Rank = Adult Champion Alburglar's Avatar
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    What's changed in 40 years?
    ...the Koi are entirely different beasts
    ...the rainwater is much more acidic
    ...the tap water has chloramine in it

    .... people kept a couple of Koi, that didn't get very big. In those circumstances they survived, not thrived. So the main change is we understand the difference now.

    What never changes is that people don't want to hear the answer to their own questions, dunno why?

    You can learn from my errors or make your own.
    ...I have made plenty of them
    Last edited by Alburglar; 19-11-2024 at 04:20 PM.
    2660 Gallons. 4" Bottom Drain and Skimmer. Draco Solum 16 Drum. Anoxic Filtration. Air lift returns.

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  12. #109
    Senior Member Rank = Adult Champion Alburglar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paul burt View Post
    surely there’s got to be a way of harvesting free water...

    A bore hole is about £6000 last time I checked.
    Last edited by Alburglar; 19-11-2024 at 05:09 PM.
    2660 Gallons. 4" Bottom Drain and Skimmer. Draco Solum 16 Drum. Anoxic Filtration. Air lift returns.

  13. #110
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    Our water expert here is Manky Sanke.

    With my extremely limited knowledge of water, but a lifetime of keeping Koi, my thoughts are:

    There are a lot more chemicals, metals and particularly pesticides in water now than there were 30+ years ago. All the run-off from farms and factories has to end up somewhere.

    I have used rain water for pond water changes before, overall I would say it had a positive effect in my circumstances because I was in an extremely hard water area so the pH reduction was welcomed and I only needed minimal tap water to maintain KH levels. Japanese mudpond water is void of KH / GH but the water volume is so vast compared the volume of fish pH crashes are few and far between, whereas in our home ponds with high stock and heavy feeding pH crashes are relatively common and often result in fish deaths.

    My 10" jumbo 3 stage purifier (as per the first 2 posts) handles water flowing at 7-9 litres per minute without chlorine getting through.

    I'm always shocked at the colour of the pre-filer when I change it every 8-18k litres. This is doesn't come close to the worst I've seen, but as I have a photo to hand.....





    And finally, as I've mentioned earlier in the thread..... my daughter only drinks bottle water and when I gave her a glass that had been through the 3 stage dechlorinator she could not tell the difference vs bottled water. When I gave her straight tap water she knew straight away.

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  15. #111
    Quote Originally Posted by Alburglar View Post
    A bore hole is about £6000 last time I checked.
    But totally free if you’ve got a fibreglass garage roof ��

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  17. #112
    Senior Member Rank = Nanasai rolo's Avatar
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    Im only a mile away from M1 i do wonder what the rain water would be like with a mixture of exhaust gases in it.
    Im going same as RS and fitting the treble 20" from finerfilters.
    the M1 at sheffield is a 60mph zone cant remember the actual % of air pollution it has reduced.
    Not to mention the amount of money its made in speeding fines.
    keith

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  19. #113
    Senior Member Rank = Kyusai big h's Avatar
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    I’m not sure I would use rain run off from a fibreglass roof. Is it sealed in the same way as pond glass?

  20. #114
    Quote Originally Posted by big h View Post
    I’m not sure I would use rain run off from a fibreglass roof. Is it sealed in the same way as pond glass?
    it is exactly the same but of no benefit if the waters not good enough for the pond, I have an issue with the down pipe at the back which disappears into a concrete path, seems this doesn’t go anywhere and water finds its way into the top end of my garage so looks like a couple of water butts for watering the garden or a rain pod and tie it into my waste to get rid of it which perhaps is not a bad idea.

  21. #115
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rolo View Post
    Im only a mile away from M1 i do wonder what the rain water would be like with a mixture of exhaust gases in it.
    Im going same as RS and fitting the treble 20" from finerfilters.
    the M1 at sheffield is a 60mph zone cant remember the actual % of air pollution it has reduced.
    Not to mention the amount of money its made in speeding fines.
    keith
    Of course, as a petrol head I would have increased the speed limit to reduce pollution

    With a100 mile an hour limit all those fumes would get blown away from the area

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  23. #116
    Senior Member Rank = Nanasai rolo's Avatar
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    And here i am thinking your the sensible one.its a right money making machine if your driving north it's all down hill the amount of vehicles that go flying past me is amazing including next door neighbour cost him £100.
    Not seen a post from AJ since i got back from jollies hope all is well with him and family.

    keith

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  25. #117
    Senior Member Rank = Mature Champion Twhitenosugar's Avatar
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    I use rainwater to 'assist' with water changes.

    However, the rainwater I collect is from the poly carbonate sheets that sit between the pergola beams over the pond.

    The polycarbonate is pretty clean (although can get dusty in summer). I'm not sure I'd want to use rainwater off of a roof with concrete tiles on as I imagine there is a fair amount of crap on them.

    On my set up, the water runs into a gutter running along the back edge of the pergola. I've put those long leaf guards (like the long brushes you may put in a multi bay filter) in the gutter. The water then passes through a course mesh (it's actually a skimmer basket, although I have used 100micron filter socks before), before flowing into the filter. So the rainwater is semi filtered, but only to reduce the amount of solids/fibes going into the pond.

    As I have an overflow (the waste chute on my drum filter) it means the pond gets a small water change whenever it rains heavily. But also the pond can't overflow during heavy downpours either.

    I have hard tap water, so there's no issues with pH crashes... But I still do water changes from the tap as the primary source of water, plus I'm sure the drum filter adds a few hundred ml of tap water to the pond on each clean cycle. ALthough I probably don't do water changes as frequently as I normally would if we've had lots of rain.

    How I see it is the rainwater helps bring down the nitrate and phosphate levels.

    Other than parasites (which came in on the fish when I bought them) and new pond syndrome in the first 2 years, I've not had any water quality issues. Nor has it caused any clouding of water or algae blooms.

    Sent from my Pixel 8 using Tapatalk
    13,000L fibreglassed raised pond with window

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  27. #118
    Great thread, very informative.

    Quick question... my local water supplier uses stupidly high chlorine levels (no chloramine or issues with metals etc, thankfully). I don't want to endlessly treat the pond water (trickle fill), and I'm trying to deal with it as best I can via my big blue.

    Is there any particular type of carbon / bone char I can use that's better at dealing with chlorine than others? Or should I be looking at trying to put an Activated Carbon Block Cartridge after my big blue?

    This is the style I currently have, if it makes a difference: Resin Vessel 36" x 8" Big BLUE | Finch Filtration

  28. #119
    Senior Member Rank = Adult Champion Alburglar's Avatar
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    Any activated carbon in the pressure vessel will work. If it stops working tip the bottle up and down, shake it about and run the water backwards for a bit. It will be good again,.if not it needs changing.
    Last edited by Alburglar; 24-11-2024 at 10:26 PM.
    2660 Gallons. 4" Bottom Drain and Skimmer. Draco Solum 16 Drum. Anoxic Filtration. Air lift returns.

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