chloramine in Vienna/Fairfax water, anyone have problems? fresh & salt & plants

[astroboy]

I'm wondering if chloramine might be causing problems I've had over the past 2-3 years and am wondering if anyone has any insights.

 

 

On the Vienna town website it says they, and Fairfax county, normally use chloramine in their water as opposed to chlorine. Not sure when this happened but I found out about it only a few weeks ago, prior to that I assumed they used chlorine. As we all know you can evaporate chlorine out easily the reading I've done says that the only ways to deal with chloramine are RO/DI or tap water conditioners that will take it out specifically. It seems unlikely to me that chloramine would last more than a week or two in circulated water but I can't find any reliable information. Does anyone know?

 

I keep daphnia for food, which are extremely sensitive to chemicals. The one time I used tap water conditioner (and let it sit for two days) the entire colony died within hours. Just to avoid hassle I'd prefer to use water exposed to air and circulated for a few days, but my daphnia colonies have never done well and other than possible overfeeding I wonder if remaining chloramines are a problem. I often use used aquarium water which seems OK, but the colonies still don't seem to do that great. 

 

I have a 90 gallon freshwater tank planted mainly with amazon swords. Despite root tabs and CO2 and good lighting they decline over time. I do frequent water changes. Chloramines? I also can't keep angelfish alive although everything else does fine. I have good filtration, sump and all that. 

 

 

As regards saltwater, two years ago I slowly lost alot of corals I'd had for years. I think the MH lighting I had had become defective and things did do a bit better with the the LED replacement but some corals have still done badly. Water parameters are OK. I had elegance corals for five years (they were part of the die-off, but did great before that) and the newest one I got, tank raised, after two months is now showing strain. Long story short, I put in new 1 mm carbon blocks, 5 mm sediment filter, RO/DI media, made few hundred gallons of RODI, and my in line TDS meter shows 2 ppm now. Input TDS is about 175. Seems like things should last alot longer than that. Sediment filter looks almost brand new.I have been using just well-packed  cat ion resin which I now understand is less than optimal and perhaps explains the bad TDS even though only a tiny amount has changed color. Could it be that chloramines are getting thru? This weekend I'll be switching to cation-anion-mixed bed deionization resin which is supposed to be superior. Anyone have any experience with it?

Edited August 27, 2024 by astroboy
clarification

[DaJMasta]

Don't know who your water utility is, but they probably publish water quality reports including what they use to treat.  I'm on WSSC up north and they have been using chloramines for a while.  They don't really outgas themselves like chlorine does, and I've never heard that just waiting for a while reduces them, so I think some kind of conditioner or treatment of the water with a carbon filter (or multiple, as we use with RODIs).  Chloramine can also damage RO membranes, so if you know you have chloramine in your water, you want at least two carbon blocks and ideally, at least one of them is one rated for chloramine (generally has a lot more potency and costs somewhat more).

 

I don't know if chlorine test kits are available for saltwater, but as I understand, chlorine/chloramine test strips exist for fresh water, so you could also test the RODI to see if there's some getting through.  Could also be worth replacing the membrane.

[astroboy]

This is excellent information, thanks!

[ReefdUp]

It's funny... I've been using my regular RODI setup for six years here in Fairfax County without a thought.  [When we moved into the area, I read that they were using chlorine only - which was true at the time.  Chloramine usage is seasonal in FFX.]  I've been having some problems lately, so I've been troubleshooting everything (I mean - the tank setup is six years old - lots of failure points).  That included my RODI setup.  Good timing on the post, although I'm a bit late to the game.

 

I don't have an easy way to add a second carbon block, so I'm switching to a 0.5u carbon filter specifically for chlorine and chloramines.  Due to the size, I plan to switch it out frequently so it doesn't get clogged.

 

Also, check that your DI resin is absolutely full, tamped down completely.  Otherwise, channels could form, and ammonia is often the remaining byproduct.