Am I crazy

[Fuzzone99]

I always run 2 di canisters. When the first shows 1ppm I remove it. Move the second to where the first was and put a new one in the second housing.
We have had chloromines for at least 10 years in Pinellas.

Wouldn't that monster need to be about 10 ft long at minimum and the water run real slow through it to start to break the bond? I am old and forgetful. Don't scold me if I am wrong.

No scolding here Rob. You are correct, most larger municipalities moved to chloramines several years ago. Chloramines last (disinfect) longer in their supply lines than Chlorine alone. If you were referring to the DI system on the labs being 10' long you are somewhat correct. Typically configuration for my home lab was...300micron sediment filter, then 20 micron, then 2 micron followed by two carbon tanks (for chloramines/chlorine/organics), then a series of 4 mixed bed resin tanks (for anions, cations. All of the tanks (carbon and resin) were of the larger, 3 1/2 -4' tall variety, about 10" in diameter, with maybe 75lbs of resin in each (so 14-16' of resin Total) . The 2 carbon would be rotated as described above, and the 4 resin would be rotated as you described but with 4 instead of only two, each older tank being replaced by the one after it in sequence. Only one "New" resin bed being installed at each maintenance visit to replace #4, with old#4 going to #3, old#3 to #2, and old#2 to the #1 spot. This would provide very high quality (>16Megohm) water for several weeks for an operation of 15-20 analysts using 100-200gallon/day (guesstimate). Further purification to 18 Megohm could be achieved through other bench top units that had Carbon/RO/DI combos on the same municipal supply. Simple systems of Carbon/DI can provide water of the quality needed to run a laboratory, but RO provides ultra pure. More often than not, the reason for foregoing the RO for a larger system is because of cost. An RO system to provide on demand water for an operation that size could run over $20K, and I have seen some RO systems that were over $50K. It takes a BIG membrane to produce that much water on demand without storing it. Storage of 18Megohm water is another story (read: headache) altogether. ;-)

Cheers!

 

[Fuzzone99]

I forgot somethhing OBlio,

OF COURSE YOU ARE CRAZY. No offense but we all are for being in this crazy hobby.

...and yes, we are all crazy for keeping wet boxes of rocks. :dance:

 

[MrHarvard]

Anyone have the dumbed down version?

Lol..i feel yah...Basically in the past city water treatment facilities used chlorine to kill bacteria and make our water safe to drink. Now they use chloramine (a mix of chlorine and ammonia) to do the job. My opinion is a quality RODI unit that is properly maintained will still provide a safe source of water to be used in your aquarium. Others believe you need to buy a specialized filer to further filtrate the water. I listen to the advice of a few select people who have successfully kept thriving reef tanks for many years, they say no need to worry so i believe there is no need to worry.

 

[robthorn]

My thought was for carbon to start to break the bond between ammonia and chlorine. Seems there was a discussion many years ago and someone brought this up.

 

[listen2bob]

Typically they switch between chloramines and chlorine a couple times of year. this is due to chloramines being good at removing the top layer of microbial matrix and chlorine being able to penetrate the surface better to remove more of the matrix.

 

[CuzzA]

Unfortunately, I doubt Z will ever find the culprit. There's just too many possibilities that can weaken a coral and allow the bacteria and ciliates to begin eating the tissue. For example and this hasn't been mentioned, but something as simple as an alk swing can start the whole process of necrosis.

All we can do as hobbyists is test our water, keep stable parameters, maintain our equipment, keep up on our husbandry, thoroughly quarantine "everything" entering our tank and say a little prayer to the reefing gods. Other than that, be prepared for when situations arise to limit the damage. In the case of necrosis, having a hospital tank on hand and antibiotics to treat the sick corals. No different than why we have hospitals for humans... treat the sick and injured to give them the best chance to survive.

 

[Ted_C]

My thought was for carbon to start to break the bond between ammonia and chlorine. Seems there was a discussion many years ago and someone brought this up.

Yes - that's right - carbon is supposed to break the bond in chloramine to chlorine and amine. This is very pH dependent though. anything over pH 7 - the chloramines all change to monochloramine - which is more difficult to remove with this method.

But fuzzone is sort of right too - Chlorine is bad for the membrane. After the bond's broken - the ammonia goes through the carbon to the membrane and the chlorine needs to be absorbed the carbon. If you have any chlorine in your RO waste water - then your getting break through and need to replace the carbon filters - or else you will start degrading the DI resin beds more quickly.

DI resin doesn't remove it, so relying on our TDS meters to read zero is a false assurance.

Where did you hear that Oblio? DI resin beds will certainly remove everything in the water for some amount of time.

Your right about the TDS meters providing false assurance though - you could have a break through of anything in the water up to 0.5 PPM and your TDS would still measure 0 PPM (because of rounding and the accuracy and precision of the Inline TDS meter only reading in whole units)

At this kind of measurement - you could have copper in toxic levels (0.01 PPM or 10 PPB looks to be the starting toxic point of copper).

Ammonia looks to start being toxic around 0.1 PPM (according to RHF)

My suggestion is to take some sort of corrective action if the total ammonia rises above 0.1 ppm. This suggestion is also made by Stephen Spotte in his authoritative text, Captive Seawater Fishes.6 Values in excess of 0.25 ppm total ammonia may require immediate treatment, preferably involving removal of all delicate (ammonia sensitive) organisms from the water containing the ammonia. Some of the possible actions to take are detailed in the following sections listed below.

But - also take into consideration - this should all be done via water changes. Even if your changing out 50% of your water once a week (wow - that's alot!) - you'd still see the decline over several weeks as you slowly increased the concentration of the harmful substances in the tank.

 

[ichthyman]

Wouldn't that monster need to be about 10 ft long at minimum and the water run real slow through it to start to break the bond? I am old and forgetful. Don't scold me if I am wrong.

I believe what you are recalling is the conversations Tony and I had with the Centaur technician about their catalytic carbon products. His advice was a carbon bed, I don't recall the product # as it's been a decade + ago, with a contact time of nearly 10 minutes to effectively break the bond between chlorine and ammonia for the Chloramine species/level in our local water supplies at the time. He also backed up RHF's advice that sufficient protection from Chloramine was achieved with the cartridges and resin that (you, Tony and I) routinely use.

Anyone have the dumbed down version?

Read the links that I provided earlier.

Chloramine and the Reef Aquarium
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-11/rhf/feature/

Reverse Osmosis/Deionization Systems to Purify Tap Water for Reef Aquaria
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-05/rhf/index.htm

 

[bigzman]

I just read this. Rob you are right we must be crazy to be in this hobby (Of course I am kidding)

John thank you, I read Randys article a while ago but decided that for a few bucks more why not get the better blocks any way. I also knew I had chloramines ages ago and even before I switched to the fancy blocks. I did not have a problem as I switched out blocks every 2 to 3 months.

In my case I am not sure if it was water supply. I do think there was a on set of events that took place which quickly boiled into a hot toxic mess. With Warfare right on top.

Dave:

Thank you for your help yesterday.

 

[bigzman]

Cuzza,

Well said. I was going to send samples to triton but its highly unlikely I will find the start of what happened. On the other hand on my future rebuild I am going all the way on be preparing for when situations arise to limit the damage. Might not be as high tech as rogers but it will be a big focus if I go SPS again.

Regards,
Z