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One quick note on this. I see a ton of people talk about using RODI water. For 99% of people using the DI at the very end is a waste. RO water, if the membranes are functioning properly, is incredibly low in any ions. Using the deionization resin at the end is just wasting money. If you are mixing RODI water with tap water in any ratio then your DI is totally wasted and it's just an extra expense for you. Remineralizing your water after DI is basically wasting DI resin as well. I'm sure there are some extreme cases where the deionization step is needed but for most people it's a total waste of money.

Based on what I am reading you saying I would not run DI. DI is for people that want zero dissolved substances in their water so what they make is 100% by design. The difference between RO and RODI is so small that I think it's mostly a sales gimmick by companies to sell more product. I'm sure there are some tiny use cases where DI makes sense but I think the vast majority of users use it because a company says it's better for your aquarium. When you take your RODI water and mix it with tap water anything that the DI took out goes right back in. Using DI will only help the resin supply companies with their bottom line. My knowledge of home RO isn't great because I only use it industrially so this answer won't be the best. But if I were looking at buying an additional RO membrane for a homemade secondary recovery vs buying an entirely new unit with higher recovery I would carefully look at costs and my conditions. Inlet pressure is critical on an RO to create the proper pressure differential from the inlet of the RO membrane to the permeate side. With a low inlet pressure you won't have the driving force to push water through the membrane which will result in low recovery like you are seeing. If my water source was a low or inconsistent pressure I would look at a booster pump on the inlet. That will help your existing unit as well as help with any modifications or future purchases you make. If that doesn't get you the recovery you want I would probably look at the cost of a higher performance unit. But first I would consider what you are trying to optimize. For me personally I try to optimize my cost. I would look at the cost of a new unit vs the cost of water with the really low recovery you are seeing. If it's a really long pay back period I would save the upfront cost and just deal with the higher water cost. But if you are worried about your environmental impact and wasting water your calculation may be much different than mine. Hope this helps a little.

What you are describing is very common in industrial RO units where you have a primary unit and a secondary recovery unit that takes the reject stream from the first membrane. They run at much higher than 65 PSI pressure and typically these basic ones get 75% recovery, meaning 3 gallons of clean permeate per 1 gallon of rejected water. If you do it this way you will not be able to tie the primary and secondary membrane permeate streams together as they will be at much different pressures. You will have to run them separately to your permeate tank. Do you need DI? It all depends on how low of TDS you want in your water. If you want zero you will have to run DI. If you just want low, like 1-10, then RO should be just fine alone. Low pressure industrial boilers will use RO water as their feedwater without any issue. Once you get up to high pressure super-heated steam boilers for turbines you have to do DI after RO to remove everything, especially the really hard to remove silica minerals that will plate out on your turbine blades.

One thing you don't mention is putting in a source of ammonia to the tank. In a planted tank ammonia will be removed via uptake by plants and oxidation by nitrifying bacteria. Once you add livestock and start feeding you have now put an ammonia source in the tank (protein in the food gets converted to ammonia by the livestock as well as bacteria in the tank). If you tank is heavily planted enough and you have fast enough plant growth its possible that all the ammonia will be consumed by the plants and you will not have any detectable concentrations of ammonia in your tank. I can't tell you how many plants this takes but I know it's not a commonly accepted sole method of ammonia removal in an aquarium. What you are missing in your tank right now is the nitrifying bacteria. Since you have never put in an ammonia source the ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) have never had a chance to start growing. The good news is if you put an ammonia source in now (fish food, ammonium chloride made for this express purpose, ammonia solution from Walmart, etc.) you will have a jump start on having AOB and NOB in your aquarium because they came in on the plants. Until you add a source of ammonia your ammonia and nitrite concentrations will be zero but that does not indicate a safe cycled tank. ACO decided to use nitrate in Easy Green as the nitrogen source instead of an ammonia or urea nitrogen source. I'm guessing they did this because Easy Green is meant for all levels of fish keepers and it's incredibly difficult to overdose on nitrate to dangerous levels while overdosing on ammonia to dangerous levels is much easier.

My peacock gudgeons eat Hikari mirco pellets and do well. When I want them to breed I put in a 3/4" PVC pipe capped on one end for them to lay eggs in. I have to take it out most of the time to prevent the male from always sitting on eggs and not getting to eat.

One more reason I am perfectly happy to have someone else's last name on my shirt patch when I go to work. I don't need these headaches of my own business.

Wow. Hard enough to own a small business when everything goes right.

How do you dose your Easy Green? If you just use X pumps every Y days I don't know why someone couldn't do that. That would certainly keep your plants on a consistent schedule. With all my plants I struggle to keep any nitrate residual in my aquariums so I never do water changes because of nitrates. If you do water changes specifically to reduce nitrates then adding more Easy Green only creates more problems for you and probably is a good idea to put on hold. In my case with all low tech plants I would just stop fertilizing while I was gone if I was worried about nitrates. Not like the plants will run out of nitrates while you are gone.

This is not the same as RO water you would make in a home RO system. RO water, especially from an industrial RO process like they would use at a bottling plant, is very aggressive to metal and does not taste particularly good because almost all ions have been removed. To counteract this they remineralize the water with a known concentration of minerals. I would guess the TDS of the Wally World water is much lower than the municipal water used to make it but still going to be higher than pure RO water.

On most softeners when you open the bypass you are instantly putting unsoftened water into the downstream pipes. So unless you are a really long ways away from your softener and/or have massive pipes running the water for 30-60 seconds will give you normal unsoftened water.

No idea. I get mine on Tuesday evenings and it seems very consistent. But here is the main article if you want to read it. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/breed-livebearers-for-profit And the advertisement: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/hikari-freeze-dried-daphnia And the membership info: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/membership Edit: Spelling

As the bubbles rise to the surface and pop they make a little bit of spray. I'll bet the spray is coming out of your lid and hitting the wall. You probably never notice it because the spray is so fine that it evaporates pretty quickly so nothing stays wet. But any small particles in the water that are either suspended (TSS) or soluble are then deposited on the wall when the spray dries. Taking the air stone out should solve the issue. Or maybe painting the wall with a paint that's easily wipe-able would allow you to clean it on a regular basis before it becomes a black mark. Or get a tighter fitting lid.

When in the ground, depending on the depth of the pond and the depth of frost in your area, its likely that the pond did not freeze solid and some liquid water remained in the bottom. With a tank out of the ground, unless you keep enough heat on it to prevent freezing, it will likely freeze solid through the entire water column and thus not leave liquid water for the fish to live in. I guess it will depend on how cold your area gets and for how long. I doubt two T-12 lights will give enough heat in an unheated garage to keep everything liquid.

You will want to remove any air from going into the denitrifying tote. Denitrification requires very low dissolved oxygen so that bacteria will use NO3 as the terminal electron receptor instead of O2. You may also need to put in a BOD source so the denitrifying bacteria have something to consume so they need the NO3. In industrial WWT its common to use methanol as the food source. I would be incredibly careful doing this with a fish tank though. If you have the residence time in there you will get some denitrification with low dissolved O2. Not sure you will get it all out though without a food source. I would also put the denitrifying tote before any plants so that the denitrifying bacteria see the highest concentration of NO3 so they can remove it as much as possible. Plus there should be a little more food coming from the fish tanks.

I only have a few Amazon swords that need root tabs so I just put them in the roots of each plant about once a month.

You can buy fairly cheap gel capsules and gel capsule fillers on Amazon. They work pretty well. I fill gel capsules by hand with Osmocote Plus. Doesn't take very long if you only need like 10-15 at a time.

Kinda being successful at: Peacock gudgeons Failing at: Apisto Cacatuoides Totally Rocking at: Water Lettuce - that stuff is reproducing like none other (no one said your breeding project had to be fish and I want to be successful at SOMETHING in my aquarium)

That's what I do. It should preserve the protein a little better as long as you can keep the bag well sealed, bone dry, and free of air (have a vacuum packer? I don't so I put the food in and submerge the bag almost up to the zip section. I let all the air out through a little open zip corner then seal it. Best I can do to get all the air out)

Before I start please tell me you are using a GFCI outlet that has been tested to work AND/OR you are using a GFCI pigtail that has been tested. A GFCI pigtail looks like this: . If you do not have a GFCI outlet the pigtail needs to be the first thing plugged into the outlet. Are you asking about a weather-resistant outlet cover like this? This will protect the outlet.. They also make covered outlets like this for at the point of use in your yard. If you are doing ANY wiring please get an electrician to do it.

My water department makes a pH of 9.3 (not sure of kH) to keep the Langelier Saturation index about 1.0. Despite this my tanks run about 7.8 pH. I let the water sit in a bucket for 24+ hours before I use it (unless it's an emergency). Have you tried that with your water?

Yes, nitrogen will dissolve in water no different than oxygen will dissolve in water. The issue comes that atmospheric nitrogen (N2) is not in a form that plants can use. The two nitrogen molecules are not reactive in the way that plants need. This is why we need to fertilize plants (especially agricultural crops). Nitrogen needs to be "fixed" into a form that plants can use. The two main forms of nitrogen that plants use are ammonia/ammonium (NH3/NH4+) and nitrate (NO3). Most plants don;t use nitrite (NO2) and its toxic to many plant species. There are a few ways that nitrogen is "fixed" in nature. There are bacteria and other micro-organisms that take N2 and "fix" them into a usable form. There are also atmospheric methods of fixation such as lightning. One interesting thing to read about is the Haber-Bosch synthesis. Fritz Haber was a scientist in Germany around 1900-1930's that invented many things. His best positive creation was finding a way to create ammonia using hydrogen (H2) and nitrogen (N2). Carl Bosch was a chemical engineer that worked with Haber. Their method of creating fixed nitrogen changed the world (in my opinion probably the biggest man-made change in the world ever). With their synthesis it was now incredibly cheap to make fixed nitrogen for crops. Those two guys are the reason that we can produce enough food to feed the world today and into the future. I would be remiss if I didn't state that Haber had some evil as well. He was the father of chemical warfare in WWI and his science led to the creation of Zyklon B. He is the embodiment of science being wonderful and evil.

Thank you everyone for the info. @Isaac M thanks for the links. I had seen the nutrients one but never saw the water change one. I'm guessing I will be on the monthly 15% water change for my aquariums unless I do some thing drastically different in any of them. I should have known the answer would be "less is more". We all want to do as much active work as possible but so many times being passive and monitoring is the right thing to do with an aquarium. I'm guessing CO2 will be the limiting factor in all of my aquariums so I will make sure to monitor fertilization based on CO2 being the limit. @Mmiller2001 I will look up Tom Barr. I have heard about EI before but never looked into it. I will take a look but I'm guessing I will be passive at this point. With no CO2 (and no desire to start at this point in life) I will keep my Easy Green dosing schedule and go from there. @ChemBob I try to space my squirts out by 3-4 days in my 20 gallon like you suggest. As my Dad taught me, "No good deed goes unpunished". In this case all is well in my aquarium so I will leave them alone. Thank you everyone for the responses.

I have 5 separate tanks all with similar issues but potentially different solutions based on the livestock. Basic question is how do I keep enough macro nutrients for the plants while being cognizant of the livestock that I have read is a little more sensitive (Apisto, gudgeons). I use root tabs and Easy Green but the math says one pump of Easy Green is about 3 PPM nitrates. I don't want to just keep squirting. 1. 20 gallon planted (low-med light) (tank in picture)- This has 7 guppies, 2 BN pleco, and 1 female Apisto Cacatuoides. I dose 2 weekly pumps of Easy Green but my nitrates are always zero. With the Apisto (brand new) I am afraid to dose any higher or with anything else based on reading a lot of them needed clean water and lots of water changes. My current water change is about 20% every other week. How do I keep 20 PPM nitrates for plants with more planned more frequent water changes for the apisto? Or am I over-estimating the water change needs for it? 2. Two 10 gallon tanks (med light each) (5 peacock gudgeons in one, 20 red cherry shrimp in the other)- I would describe these are medium planted including floaters (XL water lettuce and frogbit, respectively). I have a few swords in each so they get root tabs monthly and a pump of Easy Green weekly. Maybe 10% bi-weekly water change in the gudgeons and I plan about 10% monthly water change (and top ups) for the shrimp. 3. One 10 gallon tank (low light) (no livestock, not sure what i will do with it). This tank is easiest to mess with because its empty of livestock. I keep the hornwort (fills about 2/3 of the tank), dwarf water lettuce, and nitrifying bacteria fed constantly with a 3% ammonia solution to take the aquarium to 4 PPM daily. I randomly change water in here as I feel like it. 24 hours after my NH3 addition the NH3, NO2, and NO3 are all zero. I also dose Easy Green one pump per week. If you read this far Thank You!

I can't comment specifically on the Stingray 2 but I assume it has a transformer on the plug to go from 120V AC to 12 or 24V DC? If so you should be able to buy a Pulse Wave Modulation (PWM) dimmer for it. I run Nicrew lights that are 12V with 2.1 mm barrel plugs to connect the plug to the light. I can slip a PWM module in there if needed to dim the lights. No idea if it works for the Stingray. No idea if it will reduce the life expectancy of your light. But it will reduce the brightness of them if they are set up the same as the Nicrew (however the Nicrew has a built in controller I can use to dim them).

I never thought of that exactly. I have thought that if one of my heaters goes out in the winter (tanks are in the basement) I will use the sous vide cooker with a fine mesh over it to heat the tank until I can get a new heater. I would think if Instant Pot could get together with an aquarium power head manufacturer they could make a killer heater.