Drip HMA or straight

I wouldn't drip city water in my tanks without filtering first if you paid me.....

Chloramine bond is much tougher to break then chlorine. Chlorine is easily removed with cheapy carbon filters, chloramine you'll need fancy carbon and need to track gallons used much closer. "The Filter Guys" sells carbon cartridges and refills that WILL remove chloramine.

Check with your local water dept/company to see if they use chloramine. Mine does NOT, but I live in the sticks.

I remeber when i first was setting my drip up i got a lot of comments on how i would need to filter my water but honestly i didnt for water changes on any tanks then so what would the difference be with needing the water to be filtered all the sudden for a drip?

I have been dripping strait tap water without any sort of filtration on my water lines for over 2 years now. Chlorine is used to treat the water here but I honestly don't think it would matter if it was either or. I honestly think the levels are so small that they don't pose any issues to our systems at all with the aeration and filtration. It burns off quickly.

I remember when I first started dripping about 6gph everything was going good and I wanted to test out my system and see what happened if I dripped more so I turned mine up to about 30gph on a 600 gallon tank for a few weeks and all I can say is my tank never was more crystal clear and great looking with all that fresh water it just made the tank sparkle.

Then after a bit I turned my attention to taking a line off the hot water to heat my system. Once again many said the metals in the hot water heater would kill my fish and everything would be horrible but I went forward with it and hooked it all up. That's been about 1.5 years now since I did that and everything is working great. I even last winter replaced the old water heater in the house with a new one as it sprung a leak. I just shut off the drip put the new heater in and then flushed it out for a bit and turned it back on.

I've had many fish lay eggs/live birth and grow from fry to adults and so forth in my system without any problems. Been lucky enough to have many rays and no problems and adults that seem to be hybrids with rabbits as the pups keep coming.
I'm still dripping hot and cold and will continue to do so without any filtration involved on my water lines.


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I dont use pre filters and i drip into 8 different systems rays included 20-22gph for around 2200gal. My breeding pair of rays are in a 300gal with 4gph drip...Setting up another 15-20gph line for 1400gal and then another 20-30gph line for 3,200gal so hma's would clog almost daily at 60+gph and would be a wasted expense for me atleast .. at some point youd think more clean water buffers out anything bad imo anyway or atleast dilutes it enough to safe/acceptable levels. I thought the point of an autodrip was to acclimate your fish to your citys tap/source to eliminate the stress caused by waterchanges. In case of an emergency my fish can handle pure tap water very well (i rarely even use salt or conditioners). My theory on pre filters is if your upkeep is not 100% on em your actually creating varied quality of water until the filters are replaced. Y not just acclimate em to ur tap water as it is a "constant"...more constant than we can create at home anyway. I understand chloramines and contaminations in the water mains themselves but no system is full proof even with hma's. Seems people who drip less are the ones with prefilters/hma's. People who drip more are without them...just an observation lol.... maybe the hma guys just need to drip more tap water per volume for a more constant tank water quality. I also "dump" my systems almost daily to achieve mini changes ontop of the drip just to keep em that much cleaner.

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I used to work at a pet store that used untreated unfiltered water for all of our water changes. I was in charge of all the fish and aquariums and I wanted to treat the water but the owner wouldn't allow me to because it was an added expense.

However we didn't have any issues with the chlorine in the city water. It didn't kill any pf the rays we had in either. We kept retics, Motoros, and marblexmotoro crosses and they all seemed to do fine.

We also had all different kinds of fish both fresh and salt with no issues at all.

Also all of the reptiles and everything were given untreated water to drink with no issues.

It would be interesting to see if the chlorine actually does do anything to the fish but in my experience city water did not harm any of our fish or rays. We never tried to breed rays on city water so I'm not sure if it would have any affect on breeding but just keeping pups in it they were all fine over the two years that I worked there.


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It depends on your water. I think if your water outta the tap is bad then yeah a prefilter, but if your driping into a large tank then surely the chlorine/chloramine would be diluted. What i personally would do is have a 5 or smaller micron filter before the water from a drip enters the tank. At that size filtration youll catch most particles that may be in your tap water. But i would never do a large water change using straight tap water. Chlorine/chloramine can do serious damage to fish like gill burns and internal burns.

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My water tests positive for chlorine out of the tap. Not sure why I'd want to drip that in my tank when I can get rid of it for pennies/day.

Considering how much I've spent on my fish it's pretty easy to justify a whopping $10/month for filters.....

A HMA filter is cheap and the cartridges are cheap

Why wouldn't you use one


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After my small sediment problem a few months ago i may have lost fish if i didnt have filters on my drips.

Its super cheap to filter the water even for me and im running about 400+ gallons per day

You can go years without having any problems but it only takes once to make someone wish they had filters when they didnt. (Not trying to jinx anyone just my 2c)


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I run two whole house filters with carbon in both. You can get two carbons at walmart for $12 and each one lasts 30,000 gallons. I have two separate systems like this and put a new one in each per 3 months and rotate the second one.

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