Tap Water Treatment - Chemicals or filtering?

[whuntley]

Urban tap water, in most parts of the world, is safe to drink because chlorine kills bacteria.

Rural water in 1st-world countries is also quite safe.

"Amquel" was developed about 20 years ago, not because cities were changing from chlorine to chloramine, but because the ammonium in agricultural runoff was stabilizing the chlorine the towns were adding, and the result was killing fish-farm products. Aquaculture needed a fast cure, and Amquel was the result. It drifted into the aquarium market and gained the trade name (which is owned by Kordon's parent company).

Chlorine combines with organic debris in pipes to produce trihalomethanes, like chloroform. They are known carcinogens. Yeah. They give you cancer.

Aquarium water used to be made safe from chlorine by aerating it overnight.

Once cities started adding ammonia to the water as well as chlorine (both are very cheap and effective), the half-life in solution went from less than 24 hours to five weeks or more. This attack on the cancer problem causes a lot of grief to aquarists.

In the US, the EPA made things even worse by mandating that tap water have a high pH so lead could not be leached out of old piping. At low pH, ammonium (NH4+) is no problem to fish and is great plant food. At high pH, it turns into deadly ammonia (NH3). If folks used the old-fashioned dechlor products that were essentially photographer's hypo (sodium thiosulfate), it removed the chlorine but caused a burst of ammonium to be released into the water.

That isn't much of a problem at neutral or low pH. In Los Angeles (and other places where pH is 8 or above) it caused whole fishrooms to be wiped out in one water change.

Amquel was followed by a host of imitators, but J. F. Kuhns had patented the most stable and effective of the formaldehyde-like compounds that took care of both the chlorine and the ammonia. "Prime," Ammo Lock 2'" and many others do a similar job. They lock up the ammonium, loosely, until it can be used as food by the plants or the biofilter.

New problem: Formaldehyde kills small critters like infusoria and hydra.

IMHO, the dechloraminators are wonderful for conditioning shipping water, but they should never be used in killifish breeding tanks. Babies need those microcritters for first foods, and killing them lets larger babies predate on the ones too small to eat bbs or microworms. Essentially, the smallest babies are deprived of food when they need it most to keep up.

Carbon filtering IF PROPERLY USED can solve this problem.

Both chlorine and ammonium are weakly bound by activated charcoal, so activated carbon filters can remove them if the water is trickled through slowly enough and at high line pressure, and if the filter has not saturated and started to "punch through."

Those "ifs" can only be handled by careful testing for chlorine at the outlet.

I like to put 2 carbon filters in series, with a tap between, so I can detect when the first cartridge is saturated. I then replace it with the second (essentially unused) and put a new cartridge in holder 2.

I would never trust a carbon filter to protect my fish without a periodic chlorine test. The tests are cheap (less than a dollar, here, for a refill) and any trace of yellowing when held against a white surface is reason to change filters.

You do not need the whole kit with a fancy color chart showing ppms well above any safe level. The pool and spa refills and a clear test tube are all you need. This is a go-no-go test. Any trace of chlorine is time to take action.

Side note: Low chloramine levels, treated with the old dechlor products, don't cause fish to be killed, but a number of CA killy keepers found their whole fishrooms going sterile when they were given water without warning that it had chloramine. No viable eggs, from apparent ammonia poisoning.

Bottom Line:

If you want to breed killies, there is no real substitute for carbon filtering. [The little "taste and odor" filters made for refrigerator ice makers can provide many months of change water for a few tanks.]

If you use the dechloraminating chemicals, your babies will suffer, for they depend on microscopic live foods more than you would think.

Bloviating Mode: <OFF>

Wright

[stoker]

I agree with you Wright , never use any type of chemicals for water treatment have a filter system supplied by a company in the UK see http://www.ro-man.com/shop/product_i...roducts_id/315. it has a flow through of about 350,000,litres but still change the carbon element every 6 months.
Also use rain water from the fish-house roof pH 6 ish TDS 3 ppm and no nasties.


Mike

[Cynolebio]

When I stopped with marine tanks, I remove the RO and carbon-solids cartridge units.

This post is so clear to re-install the cartridges.