Continuous Water Change

[SunnyHouTX]

Question : what's the pH of softened water? Is it neutral or acidic even?

[wesleydnunder]

IMO, it is worth the hassle if properly set up with an activated/catalytic carbon prefilter and an accurate flow meter to regulate water input to about 10% of tank volume daily, which will still equate to about 70% weekly WC. Once set up, maintenance will be low requiring monitoring of water parameters and filter efficiency.

The percentage of total weekly partial will not total 70% with a daily 10% replacement. In a continuous replacement system, the overall exchange at the end of the first day may be 10% but a small portion of that 10% is the new water that's being mixed in with the old tank water. The second day, a portion of that overall 10% partial is 10% of the replaced water from the first day; again, minus the small amount of the new water lost as the second day's replacement takes place. The third day an even smaller amount of the original water is replaced as we are now replacing percentages of water from the previous two days. The original water replaced at the end of seven days is closer to 50% than 70%. Still not worth the original investment and upkeep, IMO.

Mark

[SunnyHouTX]

Yeah, but your water bill will still show a 70% weekly lol.

Yeah, this method might not be for everybody, especially for just one tank.

[jughead]

Far East fish farms use this setup sometimes.usually,they use a pond for a sump.running tap-well water continous into your tank will not be good.if you had a tank to store conditioned water in,you'll be getting close.

[Timber317]

I once knew a breeder in the San Marcos area who ran a continuous water replacement off his own well into his tanks, plural. He was a pretty awesome breeder and with this setup he was a Tropheus fry factory. Think about it. Every time you do a water change you have fish that start doing the shaky shakes. Well imagine that on a continuous cycle. Oh and by the way the Tropheus parents were W/C monsters and I mean huge too. Something to do with having that quality of water all the time, awesome clean water, awesome breeding conditions. He has since ceased operations but he did make his living supplying fry back then to San Antonio fish stores.