Wattley on Discus

[itafx]

I'm at the next stage in my auto WC adventure. I've cut a 1.5" hole in my floor so I can pipe the discharge to my house sump pump which will remove it automatically. I'm starting to connect up the piping. The large size is so I can stick the output of a python or any other dis charge hose down there and easily do WCs and other maintenance on all the tanks in close proximity. I plant to use a ball valve to constrain the syphon output to 1 gal/hour. That will give me 24/55 = 44% WC/day on the 55 gal discus tank. I purchased a silent toilet intake valve, but the challenge is getting it all connected up to the house water supply. The fittings don't readily match. Does anyone have a neat way to solve this?

[BillD]

The way wattley did it in his Florida hatchery was by simply dumping a tank of water into his tanks, and the extra overflowed out a standpipe in each tank. His reservoir tank in Miami was 1200 gals, filled one day and dumped the next. They determined that the change amounted to 50 % by measuring the pH before and after the change.

[itafx]

That sounds interesting. I don't exactly understand how the standpipe works. How do you get it to flow out keeping the water level, say, one inch below the top of the tank? It seems like either you have a siphon and it flows till the level gets below the siphon intake and then you have to prime the siphon again for the next time, or else you don't get any flow to start with.

[BillD]

The standpipe determines the depth of water in the tank. You add water to the tank and the excess flows out the standpipe. Generally the water coming in does so at an opposite side (and bottom) of the tank from the standpipe.

[itafx]

So you have to cut a hole in the tank like a reef-ready tank to accomplish a standpipe?

[BillD]

Alternatively, an overflow can be added to the side, but standpipes are usually added to bottom holes.

[happygirl65]

We plumbed water to my 55 gal by tapping into the cold water line under the kitchen sink and through the wall into the living room. It helped that the living room was still under construction of course and the walls were open.

We use a 1/4 line and tap like you would use for your icemaker/water to your refrigerator. It works pretty well and fills very slowly. when I do large water changes I have to bring in a few buckets of warm water to even out the temp difference but in your case that shouldnt be an issue since you are changing very slowly.

We want to do an auto top off and have even purchased a small float valve that will work with the 1/4 inch line but have not done anything qwith it yet.

I am very interested in following your thread! Thanks for posting it!

[itafx]

Through Craigslist, I sold some fancy guppies to a guy last weekend who had been in the TFH circles and knew Jack Wattley and some of the others. The guy I sold the guppies to had been a long time discus raiser and had supplied the LFSs in the area. He thought 40-50%/day was overly high and thought the Wattley column was mainly ghost written now that Jack is reaching the octagenarian stage.

[BillD]

I have Wattley on tape, doing a presentation at a convention, where he described his 50% daily water changes, at his Florida hatchery. The amount of change that would be necessary would be determined by the number of fish in the tank. In order to get a good rate of growth, clean water is essential, and doing what they did at that hatchery was probably the easiest way, to do that with growout tanks.

[itafx]

What do you think it would be for 6 discus in a 55g tank? I was thinking about getting them at 3" and growing them up and having them pair off in that tank.