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This is what I spent my Sunday morning installing outside the fishroom.

Poor man's RO unit. Produces 57 gallon of RO water per day...when it rains

Cost less than a single RO membrane and took 30 minutes to install.

I have several potential spawners (Hemiloricaria, Corydoras, Microglanis, Ancistrus) that look ready to go. Wish me luck in the coming weeks.
-Shane

I've talked about doing this, but am always concerned about pollutants in the air. Do you have a diverter which doesn't fill the tank until after it's rained for a while?

Nice!

What kind of roofing do you have on your house/garage?

2wheelsx2 wrote:I've talked about doing this, but am always concerned about pollutants in the air. Do you have a diverter which doesn't fill the tank until after it's rained for a while?

If you live next to an airport, busy road or a nasty factory, then I would worry, particularly if it doesn't rain frequently. If none of these apply, I would just empty the rainwater out if it's not been raining for a long while.

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Mats

Do you have a diverter which doesn't fill the tank until after it's rained for a while?

No, but the tube between the gutter downspout and the rain barrel just pops on and off.

What kind of roofing do you have on your house/garage?

A standard US shingle roof. I have no idea what it is made of, but it is several years old.

I understand the concerns people have, but I have been using rain water for 20 years without an issue. I am far more concerned with what comes out of my tap (pH 7.6, GH 9, KH 5, chloramine treated, flouride added) from the Potomac river than what comes off the roof.

-Shane

PS I agree with Mats' above advice. I would not try this if you live next to an airport, freeway, or factory.

Ok. That will work out fine, than.

The reason I asked was indeed some concerns I had about bitumen/asphalt shingels here in Holland contain.

Good luck with breeding the catfish!

kruseman wrote:The reason I asked was indeed some concerns I had about bitumen/asphalt shingels here in Holland contain.

But the whole reason for using these type of compounds is that they are waterproof - so not much of it should run off into the water, unless it's VERY freshly laid.

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Mats

Well, day one with this has ended and I an very, very happy. It rained pretty good today and I stored up 107 gallons (405 liters) of rain water. 60 gallons inside to warm up (water was coming out of the rain barrel at 51F or 10.1C) and 57 more gallons outside in the barrel.
-Shane

Hi all,

Poor man's RO unit. Produces 57 gallon of RO water per day...when it rains Cost less than a single RO membrane and took 30 minutes to install...........I understand the concerns people have, but I have been using rain water for 20 years without an issue. I am far more concerned with what comes out of my tap ......

Same here, I've got storage for about 1300 litres of "poor mans RO" all together. I've used it for over 20 years and I've never had any problem. I live about 10 miles east of Bath in the UK, where our tap water is good quality, but hard (17dKH).

I just link two butts together and take the water from the second butt from the drain-pipe. I added a few Daphnia to each butt when they were new. When I draw the water off I check that it has some swimming Daphnia in it. Swimming Daphnia = tank safe.

Here are my 3 back garden butts, I have 2 more in the front garden (one for topping the pond up), and 2 butts at work for the lab tanks, and 2 x 1000liter IBC's for the glasshouse.

Back garden:


Front garden

(Water butt is top left on the photo, behind the fern).

IBC


cheers Darrel

Shane wrote:

Do you have a diverter which doesn't fill the tank until after it's rained for a while?

No, but the tube between the gutter downspout and the rain barrel just pops on and off.

What kind of roofing do you have on your house/garage?

A standard US shingle roof. I have no idea what it is made of, but it is several years old.

I understand the concerns people have, but I have been using rain water for 20 years without an issue. I am far more concerned with what comes out of my tap (pH 7.6, GH 9, KH 5, chloramine treated, flouride added) from the Potomac river than what comes off the roof.

-Shane

PS I agree with Mats' above advice. I would not try this if you live next to an airport, freeway, or factory.

All you had to say was "potomac". lol

Keep us updated.

Nice article on using rainwater in the aquarium:

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/water-softening

By the way, I do what Shane is doing (have been doing it for a year) and several others in my local club (in Maryland) also use rainwater. So far, no adverse effects seen.

If, air pollution was a concern, couldnt it be filtered thru carbon?

exasperatus2002 wrote:If, air pollution was a concern, couldnt it be filtered thru carbon?

Depends on what the pollutants are. For example nitrous oxide, which will make nitrate when mixed with water, is not captured by carbon, nor do I believe for example jet fuel would be - but perhaps some of the burn-off products of jet fuel is. Heavy metals are, so if you live next to some heavy industry that leaves a load of soot and grime, perhaps. If there is "visible" pollution, you may also want to use a particle filter of some sort (similar to what goes before an RO unit).

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Mats

Would there be any value in treating the rainwater with Seachem Prime, to remove any "nasties" that may be in the water?

We recently had our water useage changed to metered (rather than a set monthly fee related to the value of the house/flat) and while I've had three broods of Steatocranus casuarius and Ilyodon xantusi raised in Southampton's hard alkaline tap water (ph 8-8.2; kH 11; gH 13/14), I'd love to see some of my Micro/Synodontis or my Ctenopoma acutirostre spawn, by mixing the tap water with some rainwater.

N0body Of The Goat wrote:Would there be any value in treating the rainwater with Seachem Prime, to remove any "nasties" that may be in the water?

Like the "carbon" above, it very much depends on what you are trying to remove. I don't know EXACTLY what Seachem prime contains (or any of the other similar products). But I think to a large degree, aside from chlorine, these products are more related to scaremongering about removing "hevay metals" and such things. There shouldn't be much heavy metals in your water - if there is, don't drink it! There CERTAINLY shouldn't be much heavy metals in the rainwater, or you shouldn't use it [even if you can remove the heavy metals themselves, other compounds are likely to remain].

We recently had our water useage changed to metered (rather than a set monthly fee related to the value of the house/flat) and while I've had three broods of Steatocranus casuarius and Ilyodon xantusi raised in Southampton's hard alkaline tap water (ph 8-8.2; kH 11; gH 13/14), I'd love to see some of my Micro/Synodontis or my Ctenopoma acutirostre spawn, by mixing the tap water with some rainwater.

I don't see a problem with collecting rainwater - other than the supply varies depending on rainfall, which can be tricky to deal with...

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Mats

recently a veranda is build on my house. It will be opened in summer, and reclosed in winter, to allow sub-tropical fishes to thrive - without me dragging them twice a year out of their tank / pond.

The roof is plastic, and the rainwater is collected inside. I expect to safe half the water I would otherwise use

It's not so bad in my area, because I essentially live a northern rainforest (Vancouver, Canada), where it rains 250+ days a year, but drizzling rain. That's where my concern is I guess. Where it rains heavy, the pollutants are removed quickly in the beginning of a rainstorm. But here, it can rain for 5 hours and only produce 4 mm of rain at times. Also, my reasoning for rainwater is just for conservation of water. Our water comes out of the tap at a TDS reading of about 20 ppm, and GH and KH are 1 or immeasurable. I guess I'll give it a try this spring, which is now. Oh one other question, would excessive pollen be a problem? During spring, there is so much pollen that all flat surfaces are yellowish green. Would that have any adverse effects when concentrated into a tank?

Doubt pollen is bad for the fish, but again, you can filter it through some filter floss or a particle filter cartridge like those used for RO systems.

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Mats

MatsP wrote:Doubt pollen is bad for the fish, but again, you can filter it through some filter floss or a particle filter cartridge like those used for RO systems.

Thanks of the input Mats. I was just worried there may be some sort of problem like with resins from some trees and such. And yes, the filtration prior to use is probably a good idea.

I wouldn't be so concerned with airborne pollution, but rather what lurks in the gutters: bird faeces, microorganisms, decomposing leaves, algae, general organic sludge etc.

I guess it would depend on the overall cleanliness of the gutters, but could certainly have the potential to reduce water quality if they were pretty clogged up.

racoll wrote:I wouldn't be so concerned with airborne pollution, but rather what lurks in the gutters: bird faeces, microorganisms, decomposing leaves, algae, general organic sludge etc.

I guess it would depend on the overall cleanliness of the gutters, but could certainly have the potential to reduce water quality if they were pretty clogged up.

That's a given there. I'd flush them all out every week before collecting if I were doing this.

All you had to say was "potomac". lol

I almost wrote "Polutomac" but was not sure everyone would get it.

Enter in Google "Polutomac river" and it returns "Did you mean: potomac river." Can't make that up.

-Shane

PS I cleaned the gutters a few weeks ago really well, but am not sure it would make a big difference here where the leaves are all oak and maple. I would be much more concerned if my gutters were packed full of old rotting pine needles.

Shane wrote:I almost wrote "Polutomac"

Ha! Good one. There are some pretty good amalgamations of words out there. One of my favorites is "diabesity".

Hi all,

It's not so bad in my area, because I essentially live a northern rainforest (Vancouver, Canada), where it rains 250+ days a year, but drizzling rain.

Absolutely perfect, all of those rainy days (and snow) will very effectively remove all aerosols from your rain-water, and I would be very surprised if you have any more than 10MicroS conductivity of solutes in your rain water. We don't get much snow here, but big wet flakes of snow are a brilliant for cleaning the air up, and the only time my rain water has been anything near pure H2O was after the snow in 2010/11. <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... 3&p=207735>.

I wouldn't be so concerned with airborne pollution, but rather what lurks in the gutters: bird faeces, microorganisms, decomposing leaves, algae, general organic sludge etc.
I guess it would depend on the overall cleanliness of the gutters, but could certainly have the potential to reduce water quality if they were pretty clogged up.

This is one of the reasons for having 2 water butts linked together with a tap, you can drain and clean the butt linked to the diverter, without losing all of your water. The second butt, from which you draw the water, always remains free of organic debris.

I also think that gutter/downpipe with a diverter will be much cleaner than one without, instead of all the sparrows nests, moss, lichen, leaves etc. ending up in the down-pipe, blocking the soak-away and/or sewer, they are trapped by the diverter, and need to be removed to ensure that water flows into the water butt.

Because of this requirement for cleaning the diverter, I ensure that I can remove it, whilst leaving the rest of the down pipe in place.

cheers Darrel