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My mostly DIY Kati/Ani water filtration system


Daemonfly

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My #10 Kati-Ani system back up & running after a small disaster (don't put a valve in that you assure yourself you won't leave closed... BOOM!).

 

 

Blue resin is how much I had to replace. Got running now to flush the system out. Red tint on top of the Ani (white/blue) is from the dye in the red resin, as that was sitting for a while, it'll clear up. Water flows Sediment>carbon>carbon>kati>ani through 3/8" tubing.

 

Clickable thumbnail:

katianiv2T.jpg

 

This will supply the 75g tank I'm slowly setting up, as well as my small 20g long frag tank.

 

 

No waste water like RO, but you do have to spend about ~$50 a year or so to recharge the resins with muriatic acid & lye (depends on how much water you filter).

 

Tap water: 190 TDS

1st bucket while flushing the system: 041 TDS.

2nd bucket after system was flushed: 001 TDS

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The Propagator

Could you use that system on Saltwater set ups as well?

How much did it cost you to build, and whats your GPD ?

 

VERY VERY NICE BTW Dae !! Me likey !

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Daemonfly: how do you think the system would do on someplace that has a higher TDS out of the tap?

 

I was looking into a DIY kati/ani setup but was led to believe it couldn't the job for me...

 

out of tap is near 400 TDS :/

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Prop, this replaces an RO unit. Instead of relying on the RO membrane to remove most of the stuff, you increase the DI resins instead.

 

I haven't tested it for total safe max GPH yet. all the connections on top are just pushed on for a failsafe.

 

Maeda, I don't really have the data on how much these systems can handle, but I do know that people use the smaller units on bigger tanks than I have. I just got a great deal on this one. One thing I know for sure, you will deffinately be recharging the system more often than I would.

 

Anthony Calfo is a proponent of the systems, but Steven Pro seems to have more hands-on experience with them. You could probably try contacting him at the Marine Depot forums.

 

Post from Steven Pro:

My #2 set holds about 0.6 gallons of each resin. What is a quart, 0.25 gallons? If my math is correct, one quart of each resin would make about 165 gallons worth of water in my area. My TDS varies between 100 and 200.

 

 

The site for the good German units is http://www.aquatechnic.de/ I beleive they can respond to English emails.

 

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic41942-13-1.aspx Guy with 300-400 TDS

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sweet. I love your knowledgable posts and replys daemonfly!

 

There's just so much BSing about kati/ani around(by around i mean on that other super large reef forum) that its hard to believe anything.

 

doing a little more reading on it leads me to believe i'll just have to recharge the resin more often, making this much like my RO/DI, more-expensive-and-a-pain-then-for-everyone-else-but-still-works, but works for cheaper....

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Maybe I could respond to this thread since I have two water treatment systems, one 250gpm and one- 50gpm, and yes that's gallons per minute.

I admire Anthony Calfo for many things but his anti-RO bandwagon is one place I disagree. In my opinion, the type of system you set up for producing ultrapure water is totally dependent on your feedwater.

I worked for some years using only separate cation/anion beds, and was a slave to regenerating with acid and caustic. With lower ionic water with no organics or iron present, that's not a bad way to go. Let the source water increase in those components, and with higher ionic (calcium, magnesium, metals, sulfates, etc.) loads, the run times get shorter and shorter between regenerations until finally the resin cannot be regenerated easily. The development of RO systems wasn't as an alternative to DI, it was an adjunct, to help lengthen the run times on the DI resin, and to help reduce regenerent (acid,caustic) waste. Granted, RO waste water can be substantial, if you don't have any other use for it. (Me, I use mine for watering my flower beds) On the other hand, if you haven't regenerated your DI beds yet, you will be surprised how much water you have to use to backwash/regenerate/rinse your DI beds! So not as much water is saved as you think.

What is really needed is an easy way to clean the RO membrane. We do it at work and the membranes last in excess of 10 years, and that's with hard water (loaded with calcium/magnesium/carbonate/sulfate/phosphate.

Summary - if you have nice soft (low pH) water with no iron (that will permanently foul resin faster than anything) and high priced feedwater, then maybe a DI system is for you, otherwise, an RO is a good investment. On the other hand Daemonfly, when you get tired of regenerating, you can add an RO to the front of that rig (which looks very good by the way) and almost forget to regenerate those big old honker beds for a long time.

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Good info. I know DI worked well for me as I had low TDS water and already tried it on a much smaller system for my nanos. I got this unit for $100, which is a few hundred lower than what you'd have to pay retail, as it's their largest system. Although my little blunder did add to the cost of the whole setup :( . I was also considering making it look nice, welded angle-iron ,etc.. but this just sits in my unfinished basement half, so I just rigged something up with 2x4s.

 

 

 

I've seen some kind of RO setups that reduce waste water to either 1:1 or 1:2 (ro:waste), by, I think, putting multiple membranes in parallel. I haven't researched that much yet. I currently have no use for the wastewater yet, so it would be wasted.

 

 

What is really needed is an easy way to clean the RO membrane. We do it at work and the membranes last in excess of 10 years, and that's with hard water (loaded with calcium/magnesium/carbonate/sulfate/phosphate.

 

You say your work has a way to clean them? Can you find out how?

 

BTW, you can get all the parts for this system cheap on ebay. I think a set of 3 of those filter canisters ran me around $20.

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"You say your work has a way to clean them? Can you find out how?"

 

I've been doing it for quite a while. If you don't mind, I'll publish the results of my experiments on RO cleaning as soon as they are finished. I am trying to find a suitable pump at this point.

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