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water problem with growth inside water reservoir, please help

SichuaneseFoodFan

SichuaneseFoodFan

I have a water reservoir, which is a 20 gallon food grade BRUTE trash can.  I use a submersible pump to carry the water to an elevated, 5 gallon food grade bucket.  This is part of a drip system where I need to keep the water level of the top bucket even (for even pressure for my blumat system).
 
The problem is the water in the reservoirs gets disgusting very quickly.  I clean everything with bleach, but 48 hours later, it's gross again.  I suspect it's bacteria, because there is no light access to the reservoirs.  The pump runs 24/7.  Would an airstone fix this?  I need a permanent fix, or else I'm going to scrap everything because of how much of a pain this has been.
 
There's no nutes in the water.  The only thing I've added is ph-down, and h202 (to no avail).
 
How can I keep this water clean?  thanks so much!!
 
When I put in my flood table I didn't aerate the water since you don't need to. It only took a few days for it to get stagnant and yucky. Tossed in a couple air stones and no more issues in between the 2 week nute changes. 
 
Are you using tap water or well water? I have a 20 gallon storage container for my RO water. It can go almost 180 days with no cleaning (blue type water barrel).

Try using RO water. Make sure all your stuff is sterile prior to filling it.
 
Try using rain/snow. Leave a funnel and a bucket outside when it rains and use that. Goes for months without getting very nasty.
 
You can also try throwing a 1oz piece of silver in there. That is what they did in the old days of tall ships. The silver basically kept anything from growing in it. I would only try this with straight water and no fertilizer.
 
Thanks for your posts. I've fiddled with it quite a bit. I think my pump was reintroducing the bacteria. I left it running in a container with bleach water. In addition, two things seem to be working so far: 1) letting the return tube drop the water from the top of the reservoir, "waterfalling" back into it to create more aeration/convection, 2) using low concentrations of bleach in the water (1 tablespoon for the full 20 gallons). So far it's been a week and the water is still clear and the plants seem fine. I hope this works indefinitely, we'll see.

Thanks
 
Keeping your stuff sterile between water changes is a must. My little brother learned that lesson when he had a fish aquarium. He would just switch the water, and bam. Algae was back. We didn't have RO water back then. We would have to wait for 24 hours for chlorine to dissipate while bubbling air thru it.
 
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