Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all
Hope someone can help me. I'm still building my first micro system but i have water issues. I understand that the best water is rain water. The problem is it's not going rain until maybe April this year. So that leaves me with only tap water which has chlorides. My first micro system is using my fish tank which has 5 Goldies and a round GB which is CF. In the past i have had no option but to using untreated tap water with out any issues. No dead Fish. Is there anything i can add to the water or if i do use tap water what will it do.
I just can't wait for April and i plan to have my second system up and running. Already started collecting the mats.
I will post some pic's when i get fix the water issue.
Hope someone can help me.
cheers

Oh yeah very cool Forum

sl8r,
if the water hasn't killed your fish yet, it is most likely that your tap water just has chlorine not chloramine in it. Age the water for a day or two before adding it to your system. Might be best to always have some water aging so you don't run out.

Yup. What Jaymie said.

Thanks for the reply Jaymie and Janet. I'm away working for 2 more weeks in Peru but before i left home i washed 3 Chem drums. I will get the wife to fill them up with water so they should be ok when i return home.
Once again Thanks..

Not true.
Chlorine reacts with nitrogen componds in the water to form mono. di or tri chloramines. The more chlorine, the more it is pushed towards the trichloramines. All chlorinated water supplies contain chloramines.
Chlorine can be removed by aeration but this will not remove the chloramine . to remove the chloramine you have to add water ager.
But if your fish are happy and you havent had any deaths yet then i wouldnt worry about it unless your keeping expensive fish.

I wouldn't be so worried about killing the fish, I'd be more worried about killing the bacteria that we need in our biofilter, wont the chloramines do that?

If there is enough of it, it will. If your water supply is treated with Chloramine, apparently you have to filter it just to be able to make bread as it will kill the yeast. However the amounts in water that was treated with just chlorine (of which some will have turned into chloramine but not as much as in water treated directly with chloramine) are likely to be quite low unless there are nitrate issues (like fertilizer and other agricultural run off) with your water supply.

Makes you wonder what it does to the beneficial bacteria in us .

makes you wonder why some people have so many allergies/ health problems...with all these chemicals in our water/food

Hi Folks;

I've been thinking about this very question - as living in Perth I missed out on saving any of the rainfall that we had last week .
Has anyone had success using tap water from the northern suburbs? Or where'd you get your water from if not?

MajorTypo

Hi,

I'm new to this list and aquaponics in general so I'm just looking through past articles to gain some knowledge.

My question is: if you do have to use tap water, there are many good water filters you can buy to filter water for drinking, so would something like this be ok to filter the water as you fill up a tank for the fish. Or does it still leave nasties in the water?

Paul

Thats the reason i drink beer

if the filter filters out chlorine and or chloramine then yep its ok.

these are the only two that are of concern.

chlorine can be dissipated by vigorous aeration for 24 hrs, chloramine will require neutralization

Thanks for the reply Steve.

no worries.

all this info is around but it can be hard to find.

you can use aquarium de-chlorinator for the job, but i'd just as soon buy (and i will and make available to others) a bag of sodium thiosulphate

it will neutralize the chlorine

it will also neutralise the chlorine part of the chloramine (if its in your water) but leave free ammonia at the original chloramine rate.