Background: Our water is soft (GH 30ppm-ish, KH 17ppm - 1 degree) and very alkaline (pH 9.2 out of the tap). We have chlorine and high chloramine.
Lee Harper mentioned elsewhere that he was using a custom water filter and to his suprise, it was removing the chloramine as well as chlorine. I asked him a few questions and decided to try it myself. Gosh! It worked brilliantly! And without changing the rest of the water chemistry too much.
Yes, you read that right. It is removing the chloramine! Completely and utterly zero readings on all three tests that I have.
I used a 2-inch ABS (black) plastic pipe, 6 feet long. It has two end screw caps. I drilled a hole through the end caps and threaded it with 3/4-inch pipe thread. I glued in a 3/4 -> 1/2 inch reducer. And screwed in 1/2-inch threaded fittings with hose pipe clamps. I have a wad of filter fiber inside each end to prevent the carbon escaping.
Each tank has an adjustable level overflow system with a siphon to keep it level. I'll post a photo, I can't describe it.
Each tank has a small 1/4-inch irrigation hose outlet with a flow regulated dripper. I'm aiming for a 10% change over an hour, so a 1GPH dripper in a 10G tank => 10% change.
While I was here, I got some new stands. Instead of aquarium stands, I've got some heavy duty garage style racks. They actually look fairly good though, and I can now get three tanks high, which I'm pretty pleased about. Aha! More tanks!! :-)
All the plumbing is hiden behind the tanks. The tanks are 12-inch wide, the shelves in the racks are 18 inches. The pipes go behind, and a 12 outlet power strip goes behind too (attached with velcro).
Oh, and the drain is nifty too. The overflows ultimately drain into a home-depot 5 gallon bucket. I have an aquarium submersible pump in there with a float switch (from a noisy utility/sump pump from a hardware store). When the level gets high enough, the pump turns on, drains the bucket and then turns it off again.
In case you were wondering, The solenoid closes when the power goes off. I shouldn't have an overflow risk due to the bucket overflowing in a power outage, but I am going to actually test it because the overflows keep going for 5 - 10 minutes afterwards as the slow siphon levels things out.
So far, not too many leaks. I forgot to thread-tape one of the inlet side pipe fittings, it is dripping when the solenoid turns off and the pressure rises.
The overflow design comes from here: http://waynesworldangelfish.com/automated_water_changes.htm - you can see the siphon arrangement in some good photos there. Mine is similar in more ways than I realized.
Photos will be forthcoming...