Alternatives to RO water?

I have been searching for a convenient, environmentally-friendly way to generate clean water for my aquariums. I grew up in a small town on the East Coast, and had well water when I first started the hobby. As a kid I simply used water right from the tap, and it was soft, with the perfect PH, and no additives. Now I live in San Diego, and my tap water is terrible. It's super hard, with a high PH, and lots of chloramine.

I'm trying to find a source for clean water that doesn't involve trips to the LFS, purchasing spring water, etc. I've investigated RO systems, but even the best of them waste a huge amount of water. In our perpetual drought, I can't flush 2-9 units of water down the drain for every 1 unit I keep, nor do I have the infrastructure to capture and reuse that waste water.

As an alternative, I've been trying various "ultra" filtration systems, including iSpring and Waterdrop. These systems don't produce any waste water, and claim to have catalytic carbon filters that can effectively remove chloramine. In the case of Waterdrop, the filter will purportedly " reduce 99.2% chloramine". My understanding is that RO systems actually use the same kind of carbon filter to remove chloramine.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any test product specifically for chloramines. I've tried both aquarium and home water test strips, but they only include tests for total chlorine, and those come back with 0 ppm. The armchair chemists writing Amazon reviews claim that chloramine will show as total chlorine on these strips, but my results don't appear to indicate that.

I have also tested with the API freshwater test kit. My (albeit limited) understanding is that the two-part ammonia test that comes with the API test kit is actually testing for chloramines. I've read online (again, probably not from an actual chemists) that the first bottle contains chlorine, which bonds with any free ammonia in the water to form chloramine, and then the second bottle contains a chemical that reacts to the presence of chloramine. If this is true, it means that the test will show positive results in the presences of ammonia and/or chloramine.

When I test rainwater and the water from one of my fully cycled tanks, the results shows 0 ppm of ammonia. But when I test the water from either the iSpring or Waterdrop filters, it shows 1 ppm. (See photos). This is concerning since this level is deadly to livestock, and both filters claim to remove chloramines. The Waterdrop system even has a specific model that includes an extra catalytic carbon filter at a higher price than their standard product. (This is the one I bought and tested.)







Per above, I believe these results are showing chloramine, rather than ammonia. I can obviously add water conditioner, like Prime, to detoxify this chloramine, but what's the point of using these kinds of filters in the first place if they're not removing one of the most toxic additives for livestock?

Does anyone have experience with this? Is this just blatant false adversing on the part of the filter retailers? Does this mean that the carbon used in the filter is not actually catalytic, or that the filter has some kind of design flaw that is allowing water to bypass most of the carbon? I just installed these filters, so the carbon cannot be used up already.

If these filters are the same ones used in RO systems, are those also producing water with similar levels of chloramine?

Am I stuck using tap water with conditioners or purchasing/lugging gallons of water home for every water change/top-off?

 

Our hobby suffers big time from false advertisement. Directly or indirectly, it has also affected some of your assumptions.

Anyways, I'm off soon for holidays and expect some radio silence for at least a week, but just to point in a few directions.

Perhaps do some research on ion exchangers.

Perhaps do some research on hydroponics; a little tank with floaters and emersed plants (have a look at ripariums) will filter your water. Add "dirty water" to this tank and allow plants to filter it. Then use this water for water changes with your aquarium.

 

Btw……loved your pics. They were easy to read and super pro looking.
Regarding your water situation, ruud had the best ideas, but I’m curious myself and will look into it. Oh……and welcome to FL. What kind of fish are you into?

 

Thanks for your quick replies. I currently have two tanks - one is a planted 10 gallon, blackwater with small community fish. The other is a 22 gallon, rimless aquascape with nano fish and shrimp. It's also planted, mainly with dwarf mosses and bucephalandra for proper scale with the scenery. My water eventually gets pretty clean, except for the PH and hardness, due to the actions of the plants and the biological filters. I just wish I could start off with cleaner, more neutral water without having to resort to conditioners and chemicals.
Also, the thing about the "ultra" filtration systems is that they are generally purchased by consumers as a source of drinking water. A lot of these folks are pretty obsessed with eliminating any additives, so it was surprising to find so many residual ones in the filtered water. I also tested with drinking water test strips (16 in 1) and the results were identical down-the-line to the ones I got straight from the tap. The water does smell better, so I'm guessing the filters eliminated some free chlorine, but they obviously didn't remove any TDS (as a RO system would), and if the tests are accurate at all, apparently didn't remove any chloramine and/or ammonia.

I was spoiled as a kid starting out in this hobby (way back when) with clean well water. Back in those days I only had to worry about the temperature, and would frequently do massive water changes with tap water and no conditioners. I had a rudimentary test kit but pretty much never used it. My fish (mainly cichlids) lived for years with no issues. Now in SD I'm constantly in fear of accidentally killing my livestock or my biological filter by forgetting to properly treat the water.

 

Luckily…sort of…..your tanks are not huge so whichever method you end up with wouldn’t be the pain in volume of much larger tanks. Telling us your tank size also provides information about what particular needs you’ll have.
For example, tomorrow is my large tanks water change day. I go through abt 45g of new water each time for the two tanks (60g and 75g) and then prep my storage can with replacement fresh tap water/RO w a heater and air stone for the next time. It’s much easier for me to do the WCs for my 20g, 10g, and 5.5g when that day next comes up.

 

Could you collect and store rain water?

 

Nah, unfortunately, we only get about 10 inches of rain per year here in SD, and sometimes a lot less.

 

I am so lucky, very soft water from a mountain stream, untreated with any chemicals, very low TDS/conductivity. Straight out of the tap into the tanks. I think if I hard hard water I would keep different fish, rift lake cichlids or Central Americans with livebearers for example.

Nah, unfortunately, we only get about 10 inches of rain per year here in SD, and sometimes a lot less.

Right, not possible then…

 

Sioux Falls put out a great article on how chloramines affect fish and how to treat.
https://www.siouxfalls.org/public-works/water-division/documents/chloramines-and-fish

Basically, chloramine treatment has the water company adding chlorine, and then also ammonia.
The chlorine will outgas, but the ammonia will remain. So you will read the ammonia on a test.

Prime will not detoxify that residual ammonia. That is one of the lies out there. But the level is so small that it usually has no affect on fish as long as your pH is below about 8.0. So they take credit and sell bottles.

As described just fill a big barrel and filter over zeolite to absorb the ammonia. the filtering process will remove the chlorine. So you will have fish ready water. And better yet, well aerated with high oxygen.

I pre-treat my well water like this and its great to have highly oxygenated fish ready water. This should get you back to the good old days.

And toss out your Prime.

 

Not sure if I understand, so the goal is to have RO water or to remove chlorine/chloramine?

A few drops of dechlorinator for big tanks of water is not that much money in this hobby, I don't think it's a big concern compared to the other costs.

I dont use dechlorinators at all for Toronto tap water that's supposedly treated with up to 3ppm of chloramine. It's a more complicated discussion on how much free chlorine vs residual chlorine is in your tap water and whether it has any affect on aquarium life

 

Super hard water with high pH. There are fish that would thrive in that water. Is that the only thing making the water "terrible". If it were me I would add conditioner for the chloramines and then keep fish that like the water you have.

 

Municipal tap water is not the devil it's often made out to be. Besides being free of deadly bacteria, (a good thing!) it is regularly tested and must meet rigid standards. This is not true with well water, which could range anywhere from perfectly pristine to instantly deadly. I'm sure there are many in your area successfully using your tap water with all kinds of fish.

 

Municipal tap water is not the devil it's often made out to be. Besides being free of deadly bacteria, (a good thing!) it is regularly tested and must meet rigid standards. This is not true with well water, which could range anywhere from perfectly pristine to instantly deadly. I'm sure there are many in your area successfully using your tap water with all kinds of fish.

Yes……that’s a great idea. Ask around/local LFSs where you live and pick up tips unique to your situation/location, for surely there must be others keeping tropical fish nearby.

 

TLDR version of my response below: There is no quick, easy, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly way to effectively remove chloramines AND ammonia from tap water.

Long version:

Thanks for all the responses.

I think there may be some confusion about what chloramines are, and how they affect different biologies.

Chloramines are not chlorine, nor are they ammonia. Instead they are compounds that contains ammonia bound up with chlorine. There are three kinds of chloramines: monochloramine (NH2Cl), dichloramine (NHCl2) and trichloramine (NCl3). The chloramine used in municipal tap water is monochloramine (Monochloramine - Wikipedia), but it converts in the water into the other two, and vice versa, depending on PH and other water conditions. Municipal tap water may also contain free chlorine and ammonia, but these are added after the chloramine.

Tap water with chloramines may generally be safe for drinking (although there are some serious caveats to that), but the level of chloramines in San Diego tap water is deadly to fish, and especially to invertebrates, like shrimp.

WILL CHLORAMINE AFFECT MY PETS OR PLANTS?
Chlorine and chloramine are toxic to fish, other aquatic animals, reptiles and amphibians. Unlike humans and other household pets, these types of animals absorb water directly into the blood stream. Don’t keep these animals in water that contains these disinfectants. Unlike chlorine, chloramine cannot be removed by letting water sit out for a few days.

(Source: Water Disinfection with Chlorine and Chloramine | Public Water Systems | Drinking Water | Healthy Water | CDC.)

Per San Diego's water quality report, the average amount of chloramine in SD tap water is 3.8 ppm, and the average is 2.0 ppm. (Source: https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/annual_drinking_water_quality_report_online.pdf)

This amount of chloramine is many times the lethal limit for fish and invertebrates.

Chloramine residuals in water used to keep fish should be kept below 0.1 mg/L. [0.1 mg/L is also 0.1 ppm] (Source: https://www.siouxfalls.org/public-works/water-division/documents/chloramines-and-fish#:~:text=Chloramine residuals in water used,stores and chemical supply houses.)

Even with only a 10% water change, the amount of residual chloramine is still lethal to biological filter within minutes, and to the livestock within a few hours. The effects of chloramine exposure are usually irreversible, and once livestock show symptoms they cannot be saved by any means.

Unlike chlorine, which evaporates from open water within hours, chloramine can take weeks to break down. (Source: https://www.siouxfalls.org/public-works/water-division/documents/chloramines-and-fish#:~:text=Unlike free chlorine, which dis,may take weeks to disappear.)

Unfortunately, chloramine is very difficult to remove. They’re small, stable molecules that have no net charge. This makes it hard to remove them with distillation, reverse osmosis, or ion exchange. The best way to remove chloramine is with a whole house water filter using an activated carbon filter with a low flow rate. The carbon itself doesn’t remove chloramine, but it acts as a catalyst for the chemical breakdown of chloramines into harmless chlorides. The byproducts, including ammonia, should then be removed with reverse osmosis. (Source: How Is Chloramine Used in Water Treatment Facilities?)

Anyway, back to my original question, which I think I've figured out...

My original question was whether there was a way to easily and effectively remove the chloramines from my tap water without RO (which is too wasteful for SD). I tried ultra filters because they promised to remove chloramines without waste water, via the same catalytic carbon filters as RO systems use.

I couldn't figure out why my ultra filters were still showing 1 ppm on the API ammonia tests (which I assumed were actually showing 1 ppm of chloramines, since that is what it shows when I test my tap water directly.) However, the quote above, I think, gives the answer.

RO doesn't remove chloramines. RO systems instead relay on catalytic carbon filters just like utra filters. However, the piece I was missing was that the catalytic carbon filters convert the chloramines to ammonia, which RO does remove. Thus the water produced by a good RO system has 0 ppm of chloramines and 0 ppm of ammonia.

My ultrafiltration systems are likely converting the chloramines to ammonia, but not removing the ammonia. In essence, I'm putting 1 ppm of chloramines into the filter and getting 1 ppm of ammonia out.
This ammonia is then showing up in my API test. The results look the same as for tap water because the API test is actually detecting both ammonia and chloramines by virtue of its two-step process.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any consumer tests that directly detect chloramines, which makes it really hard to confirm my hypothesis. Even the municipal water management authorities test for chloramines indirectly by detecting their byproducts.

At any rate, in case it's helpful to others who may be searching, it appears that there is no easy, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly way to effectively remove chloramines AND ammonia from tap water.

1. RO systems can remove both, but produce copious amounts of waste water.
2. Ultrafiltration systems convert chloramines into ammonia but don't remove the ammonia.
3. Letting the water stand will not work, as it will with free chlorine, as chloramines take weeks or longer to break down and evaporate. Stored water will still need to be tested and likely treated with conditioner anyway to ensure any residual chloramines and their toxic byproducts are made inert.
4. While plants are much less sensitive to chloramines, they don't remove chloramines, so a refugia or hydroponic filter setup won't help.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I can't rely on rainwater collection, as SD gets very little rain, and during many years gets no measurable rain for six months or more during the dry season.

I am familiar with water conditioners, as those are what I've been using. However, as I mentioned above, I'd like to find a reasonable alternative, if one exists. Cost is not the issue. My problems with conditioners are that they are hard to measure accurately for small amounts of water, and also easy to forget during my water changes. I don't have space to store a large volume of pretreated water, so instead I have to treat and wait one-bucket-at-a-time. I've come close to forgetting to add the conditioner before, and am afraid I'll forget at some point, and wind up losing my shrimp, fish, and the biological filter. As I pointed out above, with the chloramine levels in SD water, it wouldn't take much more than a top-off to kill everything.

On a related note, I say the quality of SD water is terrible because of the chloramines, as well as the hardness and high PH. Hard water and high PH might be great for some species, and generally OK for most others. However, similar to high PH and ammonia, the combination of high PH and chloramines are even more toxic to livestock than with low PH. This is due to the way that chloramines break down and react at different PH levels, and also how fish and invertebrates absorb the chloramines and their byproducts at different PH levels. Basically, the lower the PH (within reason) the higher the level of chloramines, ammonia, and other byproducts the livestock can survive. The opposite is true of a high PH.

The folks I've spoken to at my LFS all use the RO water they sell there. There is a steady stream of customers coming into the store lugging buckets and plastic storage tanks. It's quite a chore. I also don't know what the store does with all the waste water, but I suspect it goes down the drain.

Anyway, as one commenter pointed out, ammonia can also be removed by using a chemical filter such as zeolite. Zeolite requires salt treatment to recharge, but is fairly inexpensive in bulk. As mentioned, I don't have a lot of space at my house for barrels and water storage, but I may try this approach. My understanding is that, like with other chemical filters, zeolite requires monitoring to ensure that it has not become inert. Filtering with zeolite also requires enough time to ensure that all the ammonia has come into contact with the zeolite and been captured. Therefore any water being used from such a setup must be tested before use.

I think I'm going to play around with making my own zeolite filter to test how long the water must be in contact with the zeolite to remove the ammonia. Perhaps I can fill a PVC pipe with zeolight and pour the filtered water through it to produce (near) instant clean water.

 

As you have seen, the catalytic carbon filters can claim to remove chloramines. But in reality what they do is remove the chlorine and leave behind the ammonia. Trust your tests. You have ammonia.

But that means there is no more chloramine right?

The same thing happens when you add dechlorinator. The dechlorinator removes the chlorine, but leaves behind the ammonia. Same thing. It removes chloramines. Right?

The left behind ammonia from chloramine has created confusion in the aquarium for a long time.

There is nothing that 'binds' this ammonia. But there are lots of things that make that false claim. Beware.

At high pH (especially cichlid tanks or brackish) the residual ammonia kill's fish. And the false claims don't provide any protection.

You don't need RO water, although that will work but is a pain and expensive . Instead just filter with zeolite to remove the residual ammonia.

 

WILL CHLORAMINE AFFECT MY PETS OR PLANTS?
Chlorine and chloramine are toxic to fish, other aquatic animals, reptiles and amphibians. Unlike humans and other household pets, these types of animals absorb water directly into the blood stream. Don’t keep these animals in water that contains these disinfectants. Unlike chlorine, chloramine cannot be removed by letting water sit out for a few days.

That's what every municipality says, but the reality is quite different. In my experience tap water is not strong enough to be a threat to any biological filter nor livestock, which can be tested quite easily.

Chloramine is toxic because it reacts with organic compounds, but fish tanks have a ton of them. All that mulm and dissolved organic carbon would have reacted long before chloramine impacts livestock. In fact, more recent research have shown that biofilm is quite resilient to chloramine and bacteria will even use it as a food source (search papers on Chloramine induced nitrification).

The degassing done at water treatment plants is a bigger issue and might be misattributed to chloramine toxicity. But it's just co2 gas removal to raise pH and reduce corrosion on the pipes. Fish plopped into degassed water will die pretty quickly. The solution is to just let the water sit for a day or use an aerator. Conveniently, this will also reduce the stability of chloramines so a proper experiment should isolate these variables.

Either way, if the goal is to have fish safe water: simply let the water sit for a day (even better with an aerator), then you can add fish to it, pour it on your filter media, do anything and it's not gonna have any negative impact

 

If you have 1.0 ppm chloramine water, and you add dechlorinator, you will get 1.0 ppm residual ammonia.

At a pH of 8.5 like in an African cichlid tank, that 1.0 ppm ammonia will kill fish.

www.blueridgekoi.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/pH-and-Ammonia.pdf

But if you have water with 7.8 pH (which is common) then that same level of ammonia is not toxic.

 

A quick google search reveals that there is a San Diego tropical fish society. You might find it helpful to talk to the members or any other fish keepers/breeders in the area about how they treat their water.

 

If you have 1.0 ppm chloramine water, and you add dechlorinator, you will get 1.0 ppm residual ammonia.

At a pH of 8.5 like in an African cichlid tank, that 1.0 ppm ammonia will kill fish.

www.blueridgekoi.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/pH-and-Ammonia.pdf

But if you have water with 7.8 pH (which is common) then that same level of ammonia is not toxic.

Realistically, ammonia is consumed pretty quickly so if it sat in a water reservoir or any container with biofilm it will be gone after a day, so tap water ammonia/chloramine should never be an issue in this hobby.

Only when people add tap water directly into their tanks would this pose an issue, but I never recommend doing this, my approach is always just let the water sit and various issues will be solved

 

Realistically, ammonia is consumed pretty quickly so if it sat in a water reservoir or any container with biofilm it will be gone after a day, so tap water ammonia/chloramine should never be an issue in this hobby.

Only when people add tap water directly into their tanks would this pose an issue, but I never recommend doing this, my approach is always just let the water sit and various issues will be solved

But folks don't want a big barrel of water sitting around taking up space! So they are hauling RO water around instead!!

 

But folks don't want a big barrel of water sitting around taking up space! So they are hauling RO water around instead!!

Yep….you’re right. My fish room has several Brut garbage cans of water on wheels and multiple buckets. My wife is tolerant, but exactly happy abt it. Oh well.

 

I'm not sure this is as big of an issue as it's made out to be. I would check with others in your area in the hobby LFS, clubs ect. to see what they are doing, which I don't think is much honestly.
There's things you can do if it really is a problem other than aging barrels. I mean you can set up a tank with biofiltration and some sort of living organisms, plants, maybe scuds or something to keep it all running that you could use as a feeder also. Then dechorinate and add the tap water to that system and it will get the chloramine and ammonia zeroed if it is that much of a concern just like your tank zeros it, then water change from that and top off your standby water system.
No idea how many tanks, how much water you need to size something up but shouldn't be hard to make a water treatment plant on a small scale to get the tap water in line before putting it to the aquariums, and using it to farm something for feeders or farm plants for eventual use in your display aquariums.

 

Yep….you’re right. My fish room has several Brut garbage cans of water on wheels and multiple buckets. My wife is tolerant, but exactly happy abt it. Oh well.

Tell her that what makes you happy makes her happy! Feeling each others happiness is a wonderful thing!

 

Thanks, everyone, for your responses.

Just to clarify - from what I've read, the chemical reactions that occur with chloramines are fairly complex and dependent on multiple variables, such as the interacting molecules (i.e. what substances are present), water temp, PH, etc.

Chloramine poisoning is different from ammonia poisoning, and has different effects on livestock. Both ammonia and chloramines are taken up through the gills and passed into the bloodstream. Both kinds of poisoning can present as reddened gills, bloody patches on the body, gasping, surface gulping, lethargy, etc. However, inside the animal's body, different chemical reactions and symptoms are occurring.

Whereas ammonia is toxic due to its ability to replace potassium in cells, chloramines are toxic due to their ability to bind to iron in blood cells, reducing the amount of oxygen that can be carried, and due to their byproducts, which can include bromodichloromethane and chloroform. (Sources: https://www.cga.ct.gov/PS98/rpt\olr\htm/98-R-0180.htm, Ammonia toxicity in fish - PubMed, https://www.siouxfalls.org/public-works/water-division/documents/chloramines-and-fish#:~:text=When the water contains chloramines,suffocate” from lack of oxygen, What is chloramine and how it affects fish in aquariums)

Monochloramine is apparently the most toxic form of chloramine. As mentioned above, it's the initial form added to the water by the water authority. Although the three forms of chloramines can transform into each other, at PH levels above 7, monochloramine is the most likely to form. Prime reduces chloramines by changing their charge from positive to negative in the resulting byproducts. It does not convert them into ammonia as some folks believe.

Similarly, ammonia has two forms that can be present in aquarium water - un-ionized ammonia (NH3) and ionized ammonium (NH4+). NH3 is far more toxic to livestock, and also is more likely to form at higher PH levels, like mine. Typically, though, NH3 is only about 1% of total ammonia. While there are chemicals that can transform NH3 into NH4, as others have pointed out in this thread, there is no evidence that Prime and other popular conditioners do this, and in fact, there is a lot of evidence that they don't. (Source: How does Prime work?)

My ultra filters are producing ammonia at around 1 ppm. The vast majority of this is probably ammonium, but there's no easy way to tell, except by perhaps using a product like Seachem Ammonia Alert. However, once the ammonia is added to the tank, it can transform into either form, so measuring the output of the filter wouldn't help much.

All of which presents an interesting wrinkle to my initial question - is it better to have to deal with residual chloramines or ammonia?

In favor of chloramines: conditioners do work on chloramines, rendering them permanently harmless to livestock. They work within minutes, while there's no quick way to remove ammonia from water.

In favor of ammonia: ammonia can be removed by a biofilter if given enough time and in a safe environment (no livestock). Although removal takes time, it requires no precise measurements and cannot be forgotten (although testing is necessary before moving water from the refugia to the main tank.) Ammonia poisoning also tends to be slower and more reversible than chloramine poisoning, not that either is desirable, but just in the event of an accident or mistake.

So I guess all of this means that ultra filters are not particularly useful. They don't reduce TDS (not that you'd want to reduce all TDS anyway), they don't soften water, and they don't normalize PH. They convert chloramines into ammonia, but per above, the benefit of that in my situation is not clear.

So to summarize:

It seems that conditioners are a better choice for those of us with chlorine and/or chloramines (but not ammonia) in our tap water who need an immediate, easy way to make the water safe.

It seems that an ultra filter, plus a refugia for processing the output water, may be a better choice for those who have similar tap water, but have the space and time to store sufficient quantities of water.

 

Also helpful would be under stocking your tank and doing smaller more frequent water changes so you are adding less ammonia with each change. If you do a refugium you could maximize it for nutrient uptake with bright lights left on 18hrs a day as well as fast growing plants. It can be a nice display tank or it can be hidden away out of sight.

 

OP you have not shared your high pH with us.

If your source and tank are pH of 8.5 then your residual ammonia of 1.0 ppm is indeed toxic to the fish. But only if you do a 100% water change.

But if you do a 50% water change then the residual ammonia is diluted down to .5 ppm.

This effect is one of the reasons why 100% water changes can kill fish. Creates some confusion.

 

My PH is just under 8. Per above, even a 10% water change with the level of chloramines in SD water is very likely to be fatal without conditioners or filtering.