Does anyone have iron issues in their water supply, and if so how do you deal with it?
I have an iron filter that removes about half of the iron in my well water (borehole), which I allow the rest of the iron to settle out in a 55 gallon drum for my make up water. I just had the filter installed and may have to find out why it doesn't take all the iron out.
I'm thinking I may just be able to spray it into a tank to add oxygen and allow the iron to settle out without the use of the iron filter.
How about a gigantic magnet Cecil?
Actually you may not be far off. I seem to remember something about using electricity to collect clump iron based on electron charges.Originally Posted by kellenw
How about a gigantic magnet Cecil?
The easiest way to remove iron in the water is to aerate it vigorously by several different means (it only takes .15 mg.l of oxygen) which causes the iron to precipitate in what was otherwise crystal clear water. You can either then filter out the iron, run it over a surface it will adhere to, or allow it to settle. For some reason my iron takes much longer to settle out than the text books say. And with the 45 gpm I was flowing into the trout pond, it wasn't feasible. Too much water and it would have warmed outside during the summer as the iron was settling so it wasn't practical. If I ran it into a pond and allowed it to flow into another it did drop to about 0.5 mg/l but the water would warm about 10 degrees by the time it got to the second pond.
Cecil,
I won't even pretend to understand that. hahaha. I mean, I get the general idea, but it's beyond my brain capacity to think of a mechanical solution. hehe
Plants absorb Iron. I wonder what kind of absorption you could get from running iron rich well water through a hydroponics system prior to dumping it into the tank. I would imagine it would have to be a LOT of plants and a very slow flow rate, but theoretically, it should work.... and you could produce some very healthy tomatoes. Probably not at all feasible as a solution for you, but others with high iron water might benefit from such a thing.
I found this related article kind of interesting:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...9/ai_11410414/
In thinking about it, I bet a big reason for your constant battle with chara in your growout ponds is related to that high iron content.
A local advanced tree nursery near hear has a bore loaded with iron and all they do is spray the water on a hill covered in tall grass reeds ect and let the water run through it down to the dam
If its free pick it up
Fishfood - That's an excellent common sense and EASY solution. That's more MY style.
In Cecil's case, he wants to remove the iron (or greatly reduce it) but keep the water nice and cold. He's really left with mechanical solutions only, and ones that can do their job quickly before the water warms a great deal.
When we relied on a bore for our potable water on our property at Dubbo, we sprayed the water into a 20000 gal concrete tank. The aeration started the process of oxygenation (rusting) and I used to decant the settled "rusticles" about every month from the bottom of the tank. I just used a shower head with expanded holes (2mm drill bit) to acheive a reasonable flow rate to match the bore pump's output. It worked well for 7 years while we were there and I'm assuming it is still working OK for the new owners to date.
The residual iron was great for my Wife's health as our Doctor kept reminding her!
Cheers IanK
If you don't break the rules . . . there would be no such thing as innovation!
In my trout pond I did believe something else was up taking iron more than could account for just settling. I have to wonder if the extensive Chara and/or iron bacteria was doing that. Came in at about 2.5 mg/l. Early in the year before the water got into the upper 50's F. (14 to 16 C.) the pond would read about 1.5 mg/l but later in the summer it would hang around 0.5 mg/l. That led me to believe that was because the Chara was more extensive later in the year and or the iron bacteria was more active in the warmer water.
Could be. I had trout farmer tell me that Chara loves well (borehole) water.
I was told by a professor that I could get rid of the iron by running it through a ditch with a lot of grass, but of course it would also get too warm in the summer for the trout pond.
When we relied on a bore for our potable water on our property at Dubbo, we sprayed the water into a 20000 gal concrete tank. The aeration started the process of oxygenation (rusting) and I used to decant the settled "rusticles" about every month from the bottom of the tank. I just used a shower head with expanded holes (2mm drill bit) to acheive a reasonable flow rate to match the bore pump's output. It worked well for 7 years while we were there and I'm assuming it is still working OK for the new owners to date.
The residual iron was great for my Wife's health as our Doctor kept reminding her!
Cheers IanK
That would work IanK but I was running 60,000 gallons of borehole water through the pond a day!
Here's a Russian invention for removing high amounts of iron from large quantities of water. It says, "The system itself has no pumps, no compressors, and no electrical, rotating or moving parts - virtually nothing to go wrong. Backwash is hydro-automatic - i.e. is controlled by levels of water in the system. Only 0.8 to 1.6 % of daily water flow is used for backwashing - depending on the initial levels of iron."
http://www.deferum.com/what-is-deferum.html
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