untreated water

[griffin]

oops - forgot to mention that. thanks for bringing it up!

does anyone know whether aging longer (say for a week or so) do anything for chloramines? i've heard that it worked for some people, but wanted more opinions.

 

[Luniyn]

Unfortunately no, leaving water with chloramines out will not allow the chloramines to evaporate over time. They must be broken down through the use of various chemicals, or by being run through a filtration system that uses activated carbon. Technically you could load up a filter with activated carbon and filter the bucket of water and that would break up the chloramine bond and get rid of the chlorine. However, it would still leave the ammonia to deal with. Yes you could get bio-filtration going there to eat the ammonia, but then you have nitrite to deal with. Back to the bio filter to eat the nitrite, but then you have nitrate to deal with. And we all know how long all of that can take ;D. So you are better off with using a chemical to break up the bond, and then depending on the amount of chloramines in your water will determine if you will have a lot of ammonia left over (i.e. more then your bio-filtration can handle) in which case depending on your pH you might need something like Amquel+ or Prime. Yes it's confusing, but if you like that sort of thing... check out this article. Ignore the "reef" parts of it (which aren't mentioned that much anyway) and it's got a lot of interesting information in it.

 

[griffin]

hehe, thanks

 

[arfon]

hi Luniyn . Ive received figures back from water board and to be honest don't make much sense
nitrite - unit of measurement mg/1 0.012
nitrate - unit of measurement mg/1 17.989
ammonium - unit of measurement mg/1 0.2995
total chlorine - mg/1 1.15
ike me to add any more results? ' there's 3 a4 pages of results ;D

 

[Luniyn]

No that sounds about right considering you said you had nitrates in your water. The values they gave you are most likely from the closest water distribution source to your home. Things change as it goes through the pipes to get to your house. The nitrite is pretty much nil, the chlorine levels are not too bad, but I'm kinda surprised that your friend is able to add water to his tank with that much in there.

 

[arfon]

thanks for your time regarding this subject