Api Tap Water Filter

[BotiaMaximus]

I just purchased the API Tap Water Filter with the intent of "downgrading" it to a high quality carbon and particle filter for removing chloramine, rust, and sediment from my tap water for my freshwater tanks. The unit as is contains activated carbon, filter pad material and de-ionization resin. The cartridges are pricey $20.00 US each to make anywhere from 25 to 150 gallons of purified water. They produce at a rate of 10 gallons per hour max.

The filters DO work I made 15 gallons and tested at gallons 5 and 15 - same results. I'm in St. Pete, Florida (hard water)
My Tap water has ammonia 2.5ppm PH 7.8
Filtered came out ammonia 0 PH 6.2

I do not want DI water, I don't want to have to deal with chasing PH and adding back minerals and electrolytes. I am trying to achieve very clean chlorine and ammonia free water without having to use Prime or another chemical to do this.

I got the filter because it seemed like it would be easy to re-load, and I believe I was right. I'm going to get my money's worth out of it and make water for my salt water buddy before i dump the contents.

I then plan to re-pack it with 50 micron filter pad and Black Diamond Carbon and do tests for ammonia and see how well it works and at what flow rates and what the yield is before it is used up. I plan to store it in the fridge between uses to keep it from going foul in between.

I will take pics of the unpacking/repacking procedure and post the test results.

It will probably be a couple of weeks before I can use up this DI cartridge and start the experiment.

If anyone has any ideas, opinions or suggestions please feel free to voice your opinion.

Thanks to everyone for all the good information I have found on this forum, hopefully this test will turn out to be a success and helpful to others.

"Long May You Loach"

 

[waterdrop]

Interesting info. Thanks for the post. ~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

It is an interesting experiment. I eagerly await your results. I would expect it to still pull out particulate quite well and chlorine about as well as it does now. the ammonia is being absorbed through ion exchange so that will likely stop and of course the mineral content will go back to almost tap water. It depends why your tap water has a high pH what the pH will do. Do you have raw water hardness information so that you can evaluate how well the methods reduce KH and GH?

 

[BotiaMaximus]

It is an interesting experiment. I eagerly await your results. I would expect it to still pull out particulate quite well and chlorine about as well as it does now. the ammonia is being absorbed through ion exchange so that will likely stop and of course the mineral content will go back to almost tap water. It depends why your tap water has a high pH what the pH will do. Do you have raw water hardness information so that you can evaluate how well the methods reduce KH and GH?

*************************************
The experiment is about to begin. The emptying of the cartridge was so easy it doesn't even need photos, you just unscrew the top and bottom of the filter unit and the filter is just a threaded plastic sleeve with the media held in place with filter pad disks top and bottom. Hold it over the trashcan and push down on the top filter pad and it all falls right out - empty sleave ready to load with whatever you like and screw back onto the unit. No efforts were made to make this item tamper proof or non re-useable.

The more I thought about the idea I realized there would probably still be all the ammonia present after the carbon knocked the chlorine out of the water. I now plan to add a layer of zeolite to the top (final stage) of the filter to see if this will work. I have never used zeolite before, I have heard it is slow acting so unsure if there will be enough time for it to do its thing - but hey, it's an experiment. Does anyone have some useful info about zeolite and how effective it is for ammonia removal, and would it would it work in this type of situation?

I do not (yet) have a kit to test for hardness, just PH. I'm in Florida and our water comes up through a limestone aquifer so I imagine the hardness is high calcium content primarily. I know it does that rebound thing from people who have tried to lower PH for a particular tanks needs. Most of us here have just gone with the strategy that most fish will do fine in our hard water as long as all other tank conditions are good. The LFS's around here don't adjust PH or run RO water since it could cause too many problems with variations between what everyone has their tanks set to - best to leave it alone seems to be the winning strategy.

I have a 25 foot section of .25" id airline hose coming in from Fosters and Smith so I can run from the filter straight to the tank. Bucket avoidance is one of the priorities.

I'll give pre and post filter test readings ASAP when I get this little beauty up and running.

Wish me luck!

 

[BotiaMaximus]

Test Results Are In -

From the bottom up (direction of flow) I repacked the filter with 2 layers of the 50 micron filter pad, then a piece of marineland rite-size filter pad, then about 9" (500 ml) of Black Diamond carbon, another piece of rite-size filter pad, then 4" (6oz - 170gm) of zeolite, another piece of rite-size and 1 more layer of 50 micron pad.

I was not able to get a hardness kit at the two closest LFS's, that will have to wait.

Raw tap Water: Ammonia 2.5ppm / PH 7.8

After Filtering: Ammonia .25ppm / PH 7.4-7.6

I imagine it might be possible to get the ammonia down to zero if I went 50/50 carbon to zeolite, or a night of aeration with a couple cups of water from my tank mixed in with it would probably knock the rest of it out as well.

I actually don't have a kit to test chlorine either - I am assuming it is zero. I ran the water through the filter at a trickle rate where it took 40 minutes to fill a 5 gallon jug. Through 9" x 4" diameter of good carbon that should get the chlorine out no problem - that must be 20 Britta filters worth of carbon. I tried to up the flow rate to something that would come close to letting me go straight back into the tank for a water change but the ammonia level was untouched at this rate.

My overall take on this project is a success, for my needs at least. It cost me less than $4.75 to load this cartridge with a huge amount of carbon and zeolite. It should make well over a hundred gallons of very well filtered nearly ammonia free water for less than 5 cents a gallon. I think it would meet the needs of most freshwater aquariums and a big improvement over just treated tap water. It falls way short of RO water most all the mineral content I imagine is still in there, but the carbon should do a good job with organics and pesticides, the micron pad will give it a good polishing. It comes out very very clear.

My disappointment is that I have to still do the same trickle flow rate as the original API DI cartridge so I can't go straight back into the tank, plus I didn't end up ammonia free either so that kills it as well. I have thought about trying this with a Chemi-Pure pouch in the filter and see what that does as well, nice thing is I can experiment with the media I put in there till I find the best combo. I also used regular zeolite this time and not high grade stuff.

This has been a fun experiment and I hope someone finds it interesting or useful in their fishkeeping. I definitely plan to keep using the filter for my tanks and refining my media blend. If anyone has any comments, suggestions or questions feel free to fire away.

Thanks

 

[waterdrop]

Excellent documentation. Thanks Botia!

 

[BotiaMaximus]

NITRATE RESULTS:

I had also posted these findings on another forum and had a question from a reader in the Netherlands about Nitrates. His tap water has very high Nitrate forcing him to use RO water. Mine here is fairly low and not much of a concern but I ran tests for him and the results were promising - especially if the results can safely be extrapolated out to higher levels which I have to admit I'm not qualified to answer.

My Tap water has Nitrate levels just over 5ppm

My water after going through my filter came back with Nitrate readings at basically 0 - just a tiny hint of color darker than the zero swatch on my test card but nothing close to the next step which is the 5ppm swatch.

Hope this is useful info for someone with the same concerns.


"Long May You Loach"

 

[waterdrop]

Hopefully he knows to -mix- RO water with tap water and not use it pure. I'm not an expert but I know most here who have to use RO do something like that...

~~waterdrop~~

 

[BotiaMaximus]

Hopefully he knows to -mix- RO water with tap water and not use it pure. I'm not an expert but I know most here who have to use RO do something like that...

~~waterdrop~~

Good point - and I think he does, but he says his tap water is over 50ppm nitrate!!! I think that is unsafe for drinking??? I would be drinking pure RO and running 90% RO and 10% tap in my tanks with those kinda numbers!

That's the Netherlands with all the pretty blonde girls and everything is supposed to be all clean and pure - that's where they make Heineken! I bet those bottles are clear when they start out and turn green by the time we get 'em!

 

[waterdrop]

that's it! the heineken secret