Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

As above what is a simple effective inexpensive way to do it?

Chlorine will evaporate naturally. The more sunlight, the faster it goes.

Just make sure it is chlorine that is used by your water supplier as there are some newer chemicals in use now that don't evaporate and require filtration. One of them is something like chloramine (or something like that) and it is made by bonding chlorine with amonia I think so that it is more stable and hence doesn't evaproate the way regular chlorine does.

I only learned of this a couple months ago and am now very happy to be on well water. Apparently this stuff is so bad that you need to filter it out of the water before you can make break as it will kill the yeast. I would hate to have to fill a hydroponic tank let alone a Aquaponic system through my britta filter... Three weeks later the pond is only 1/8th full.....

TC is correct. there should ba an article in the "useful info section"e

Having just read up on this (mainly because I didn't believe TC - no offense, you were right, but I checked because I believed that chloramine decayed (to chlorine and ammonia, the chlorine out gassing from the water and the ammonia being dealt with by plants and bacteria within the system) naturally, albeit more slowly, than chlorine) I found something that piqued my interest: "Chloramine can be removed from tap water by treatment with superchlorination (10 ppm or more of free chlorine, such as from a dose of sodium hypochlorite bleach or pool sanitizer) while maintaining a pH of about 7 (such as from a dose of hydrochloric acid). Hypochlorous acid from the free chlorine strips the ammonia from the chloramine, and the ammonia outgasses from the surface of the bulk water. This process takes about 24 hours for normal tap water concentrations of a few ppm of chloramine. Residual free chlorine can then be removed by exposure to bright sunlight for about 4 hours." from Wikipedia.

Given that I'm quite possibly the cheapest person I know, and given the information above, presumably it would be possible to remove chloramine from large quantities of water with bleach (and possibly acid). Does anyone with more experience than myself have any thoughts as to how viable this might be?

My initial thoughts are that even if the above method worked, how would one be able to know? What I've read about testing for chloramine, it appears that at low levels the tests are inaccurate. This is clearly a major problem with this idea.

This page states: "Homemade Chlorine Neutralizer - Make a solution consisting of 4 oz (1/4 lb) Sodium Thiosulfate crystals (technical grade) dissolved in 1 gallon of distilled water. Use 5 ml (1 teaspoon) of the solution per each 10 gallons of makeup water to neutralize up to 3.75 ppm chlorine. One measuring cup full can be used for each 500 gallons. (The entire gallon of solution will treat about 7500 gallons of tap water.) The shelf life of the solution is about six months when stored in a cool location. The sodium thiosulphate crystals will keep for several years if kept dry..". I don't have the chemistry background to know if this is kosher or not. Anyone know?

Sodium metabisulfite is a sterilizing agent that is used in home brewing that can neutralise chloramine. I have no idea whether this is a viable option for water treatment in an aquaponic context. Nor do I have any idea what the working dosages are.

I have a friend who is a former industrial chemist, I'll ask her about chloramine removal the next time I'm talking to her.

Is this one of those times that being cheap is contraindicated? I mean, I'm cheap but I'm not stupid, I can recognise that individual savings can amount to a net loss when factored into the total cost of a given undertaking. Thoughts?

I'd say price out commercial de-chlorinators as opposed to the raw chemicals. I've found that getting chemicals is not particularly cheap. Look for dechlorinators sold for use with ornamental ponds rather than aquariums. It's cheaper that way because they know you're dealing with larger volumes of water.

Aside from being cheap, I'm also concerned with introducing unknown chemical solutions, of unknown purity, into a food chain that I'm on. Aquarium/pond chemicals aren't intended to be used with food production, so presumably they can contain anything that doesn't kill fish or aquatic plants - that still leaves plenty of scope for things that I don't want in my body. With lab grade chemicals at least you know what you are using and it's purity.

That being said, it's not like our bodies aren't saturated with chemicals and substances that we would be better off without. I guess I'd just like to know what I'm putting into my body, even if I still choose to do so - an informed choice is a better choice.

The fundamental question for me is cost to benefit - as I say, I'm cheap but not where it's going to be a problem (eg. I never buy cheap shoes, they don't last and they do more harm than is acceptable).

Sodium metabisulphite is bad stuff, especially if you have asthma problems. Don't use it. There is much better stuff to use in home brewing too.
(Makes a friend of mine VERY sick)

J beat me to it, even if you dont have asthma it can make breathing hard. it is also a sterilising solution for how brewing, so probably NOT the best choice for a bioloically live system!

I'd source the raw chems myself, over the counter de-chlor ihas only a tiny amount of STS, am looking at buing in bulk myself and making it available to the oz members.

Good info came from don the feeder, wish he was still here.

Did he leave?

there were a couple of posts from a couple of members that were taken a little the wrong way. was hoping he's come back but doesn't seem to have..............what can you do.

Too bad... I leaned a lot from him..... sigh

I think I would go for the filter method of getting rid of the chemicals (provided they work) rather than adding more (and thus handling more) chemicals in order to get rid of chemicals.

I'm happy I'm not dealing with that though as I have well water that is (at least for now) pretty darn good.

Agree with TC...I put in a water tank for the fish - just received the rebate back from the state govt - cost of tank was fully refunded (few dollars on fittings only)...worked out to be very cheap for a 3,000 litre water tank

No worries on chlorine or chloramine

in Industry we would put a activated carbon filter in the line work well for organics (not terribly relevant to AP i know ) and chlorine but not too sure about chloramine you can get little ones from the B store but they are a quite expensive
100% not adding anything to the system (providing you rinse the dust off first )

CHeers