Santa Clara county, do you treat for chloramine?

Chloramine is handled by a designated carbon pre filter before the RO membrane.

Yes, I use a carbon filter to treat for chloramines.


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"Just wondering if anyone treats their RO water with chloramine?."
I meant to say "treat for chloramine".

Chloramine is handled by a designated carbon pre filter before the RO membrane.

Yes, I use a carbon filter to treat for chloramines.
Click to expand...

I do have a carbon filter as well in the ro unit. From what I've read a typical ro carbon filter gets exhausted quickly if chloramine is present.
thanks,
Albert
 
i count on the carbon filters in my ro system, also i test periodically with free/total chlorine test strips to make sure none is showing up.
 
alazo1 said:
"Just wondering if anyone treats their RO water with chloramine?."
I meant to say "treat for chloramine".



I do have a carbon filter as well in the ro unit. From what I've read a typical ro carbon filter gets exhausted quickly if chloramine is present.
thanks,
Albert
Click to expand...



There are carbon filters designed specifically for chloramines.


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It's pretty hard water around here. Just tested 370ppm but have seen it in the 400's.
I lived in the city of Alameda which has (at least at the time) much softer water. It actually tastes decent.
 
coming back to chloramine. It is always good to dose seachem prime or similar chemical to neutralize chloramines even if there is a carbon filter. Let's say your carbon filter already got saturated with chloramines, you may have a tank wipe out. Fish may gasp for oxygen due to chlorine burns on gills and lack of oxygen due to it. One or two fish may survive (like how the MSDS says rat/rabbit 50). It all depends on how long the water had been sitting in your tank too, lets say the RO had been sitting in the tank for a while then there is a good chance that the chlorine gas might have left the water/degraded and you might be ok on this case. But I would never take a chance, I would still dose it with chloramine neutralizers. Let's look at another case, let's say your tap water just got filtered through RO membrane within 12 hrs, then there is a good chance that you may have a TANK wipe out (assuming that your carbon filter is already saturated and no room left to absorb chloramines).

also, does carbon absorb chloramines? I thought carbon only absorbed organic compounds with carbon chain. NH2Cl is not an organic compound? may be there is a carbon chain in front of the NH2Cl, i.e., may be the generic formula is most likely R-NH2Cl where R is the carbon chain? since the carbon chain gets absorbed by carbon filter the chloramine attached to carbon chain also goes along with it? possible.
just my 2 cents
 
Last edited:
Another thought. So here is the question. Does the water supplier/company add organic chloramines (I doubt that) or pure bleach into water to add cl- to the water? I would assume they add bleach, and after they add bleach to the water some chlorine combines with the organic matter (carbon chain) present in the water to become chloramines. So the excess chlorine remains in an inorganic state. So, keep in mind that the carbon filter may not remove these inorganic chlorine from your RO. Better add the chlorine neutralizers. we may have little bit of chloramine in the fresh tap water, But I think Fresh tap water mostly has chlorine not chloramine. Tank wipe out can be a costly mistake, and that's why I thought I would stress the importance of adding chlorine neutralizers
 
From what I remember Chloramine is basically chlorine w/ammonia attached to it ( sort of). So when tank crashes happen it's basically a form of ammonia toxicity. The old tale about letting water sit is for chlorine only do not rely on that for today's municipal water ( I've worked in the municipal water trade for 15+ years) .. Chloramine is designed to stay in the water and "treat" pathogens etc and is more effective over the long haul than chlorine alone.. It's basically a lot stronger and you need to treat/remove with catalytic carbon specifically said to remove it effectively.

Normal carbon blocks will remove it but not effectively or for any sustainable amount of time. I strongly suggest you to get some free & total chlorine test strips and test your effluent for traces of it and chlorine as well asap.. You don't want chlorine or chloramine making it to your membranes cause it will render them useless after enough exposure and is like tossing $ Down the drain.

All you need to know...

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-11/rhf/feature/



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Dapg8gt said:
From what I remember Chloramine is basically chlorine w/ammonia attached to it ( sort of). So when tank crashes happen it's basically a form of ammonia toxicity. The old tale about letting water sit is for chlorine only do not rely on that for today's municipal water ( I've worked in the municipal water trade for 15+ years) .. Chloramine is designed to stay in the water and "treat" pathogens etc and is more effective over the long haul than chlorine alone.. It's basically a lot stronger and you need to treat/remove with catalytic carbon specifically said to remove it effectively.

Normal carbon blocks will remove it but not effectively or for any sustainable amount of time. I strongly suggest you to get some free & total chlorine test strips and test your effluent for traces of it and chlorine as well asap.. You don't want chlorine or chloramine making it to your membranes cause it will render them useless after enough exposure and is like tossing $ Down the drain.

All you need to know...

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-11/rhf/feature/



Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info Daniel!

What would you recommend doing if you have this problem? I'll be getting the test kits now for sure to test my rodi water. Is using Seachem Prime a good idea in a reef tank?
 
tmantaylor18 said:
Thanks for the info Daniel!

What would you recommend doing if you have this problem? I'll be getting the test kits now for sure to test my rodi water. Is using Seachem Prime a good idea in a reef tank?
Click to expand...

Hey what's up Taylor.. I personally think prime is OK but that's not really saying much lol.. I definitely would be using it on all made up water if my carbon blocks weren't new or I wasn't targeting chloramine w/catalytic carbon. I used prime exclusively on my old tank without an rodi and never noticed any negatives.. I've only had the spectrapure unit for like 10 years or so.

On a side note spectrapure used to state there-.05 micron Standard carbon block was enough for chloramine if you ran two of them.. Not sure thats the case anymore but could be plausible.

And a tip for testing is to test the waste water vs the final product.. That way you can tell if the membrane is getting hit with it vs the di stage stripping it out and giving false hope =)..
 
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