Help with water report

[RemainVayne]

Can anyone help me understand my city's water report? I'm trying to find what they treat my water with so I can setup my drip system appropriately. Only thing I can find is reference to sodium hypochlorite?


http://www.cedarburglightandwater.org/sites/cedarburglightandwater.org/files/CCR 2017_0.pdf

 

[CarpCharacin]

Sodium hypochlorite is the way the they deliver the chlorine to the water since chlorine itself is a gas, it doesn't easily dissolve in water. Sodium hypochlorite is a solid, and it dissolves into liberate chlorine. Get a filter that removes chlorine.

 

[RemainVayne]

Sodium hypochlorite is the way the they deliver the chlorine to the water since chlorine itself is a gas, it doesn't easily dissolve in water. Sodium hypochlorite is a solid, and it dissolves into liberate chlorine. Get a filter that removes chlorine.

Awesome, thanks man. I swear st some point I saw that my city uses monochloramine, but I can't find that anywhere. Glad to hear it's only chlorine!

 

[duanes]

I toured the Cedarburg plant years ago, as a student.
As CarpCharcin said, sodium hypochlorite is used as a disinfectant, this is dry chlorine, and what most plants in the US use these days. Any commercial dechlorinator should be effective when water changes are done.
The parameter that may influence your tanks the most, is
the water has a hardness of 21-24 grams, which converts to almost 400ppm, so it is mineral rich and very hard. Milwaukee is about 7-8 grains.
This means your choice of fish should be species that come from places like the rift lakes of Africa, or rivers and lakes in Central America. (Mbuna, African Peacocks, and convicts, JDs Live bearers, rainbow fish)are good examples of hard water species)
Fish like Amazonian species will be difficult to keep healthy long term, they often develop HLLE in hard water.
Wild angels, cardinal tetras, other Amazonian tetras, certain Uaru or chocolate cichlids, certain gouramis (chocolates) might be difficult to keep.
Many of these species prefer low pH (4-5)
Even common oscars will need more water changes in very hard water to remain healthy.
Aquarium strain may be more forgiving (but not long term)
As you can see in the report, nitrate is almost non-existent (0-1ppm) so no problem there.
Funny some more common parameters are left out of the report.
You may want to call them to ask/determine average pH and alkalinity.
Usually hard water has a high pH (8-9), and high alkalinity (100ppm), but not always.
Alkalinity is important because a high alkalinity helps buffer fish urine, and often mirrors pH, but if pH drops quickly your water change frequency may need to be adjusted up to prevent pH crash (acidification)

 

[RemainVayne]

I toured the Cedarburg plant years ago, as a student.
As CarpCharcin said, sodium hypochlorite is used as a disinfectant, this is dry chlorine, and what most plants in the US use these days. Any commercial dechlorinator should be effective when water changes are done.
The parameter that may influence your tanks the most, is
the water has a hardness of 21-24 grams, which converts to almost 400ppm, so it is mineral rich and very hard. Milwaukee is about 7-8 grains.
This means your choice of fish should be species that come from places like the rift lakes of Africa, or rivers and lakes in Central America. (Mbuna, African Peacocks, and convicts, JDs Live bearers, rainbow fish)are good examples of hard water species)
Fish like Amazonian species will be difficult to keep healthy long term, they often develop HLLE in hard water.
Wild angels, cardinal tetras, other Amazonian tetras, certain Uaru or chocolate cichlids, certain gouramis (chocolates) might be difficult to keep.
Many of these species prefer low pH (4-5)
Even common oscars will need more water changes in very hard water to remain healthy.
Aquarium strain may be more forgiving (but not long term)
As you can see in the report, nitrate is almost non-existent (0-1ppm) so no problem there.
Funny some more common parameters are left out of the report.
You may want to call them to ask/determine average pH and alkalinity.
Usually hard water has a high pH (8-9), and high alkalinity (100ppm), but not always.
Alkalinity is important because a high alkalinity helps buffer fish urine, and often mirrors pH, but if pH drops quickly your water change frequency may need to be adjusted up to prevent pH crash (acidification)

Whoa what a coincidence that you've toured the plant. Are you still local to the area?

I know that my PH is very high as I'm a stickler about testing and it's one of the values that drives my diligence of large weekly water changes. And while I know my PH should be a bugger driver about what fish I keep, I have quite an assortment across a bunch of tanks that luckily seem to thrive! But I do think the high PH is why I've always struggled to keep live plants alive, even with expensive lights and EI fert dosing...

I was looking through the water quality report for chlorine vs chloramine so I use the right filter setup for a Drip system on my new tank and I'm glad to hear it's chlorine...

 

[duanes]

Seems to me, one reason they use straight chlorine (is because it is well water) which doesn't contain a lot of organic compounds.
Chloriamine is especially valuable when surface water is the source (like Lake Michigan) because there are lots of organic compounds in surface water, which react with straight chlorine to produce trihalomethane, and chloramine helps create "less" of those trihalomethanes when reacting with organics. Trihalomethes are carcinogenic.
Chloramine is also valuable in larger cities because it provides a longer lasting disinfection residual throughout the distribution system.
Not needed in a city the size of Cedarburg (as of yet).
They were very nice people when I was there, and a call could be probably be answered and reassuring.
To produce chloramine 1 part of ammonia is usually mixed with 4 to 5 parts chlorine, and sometimes called "Total Chlorine".
I now live in Panama.

 

[DRUKENMUNKY]

if you are setting up a drip system using standard 10 inch by 2.5 inch water filter canisters...use the carbon blocks from bulk reef supply. I have two installed in my drip system and it removes both chlorine and chloramine which my city uses. with a addfitional sediment filter i average about 3 months between cartridge changes and i change just under 125 gallons daily. If you reaaly want to be safe you can also add a small dosing pump that u can find on amazon......i originally did this and was dosing 1ml of diluted pond prime and water an hour but i eventually took it out.....the carbon blocks were doing the job just fine

 

[DRUKENMUNKY]

let me add something to my reply that I forgot to suggest......if u are like me and are very attached to your fish it is a bit nerve wrecking when you first turn on the drip system and trust your fishes lives with waster that is not being dosed so what I did was turn the drip system on and first just filled a small quarantine tank with %100 water from the new system...and then placed a very unhardy water sensitive fish in there { I used a baby clown loach } and see if it survives...….once I saw it was having no issues at all...I was confident in leaving running on the main tank system

 

[RemainVayne]

if you are setting up a drip system using standard 10 inch by 2.5 inch water filter canisters...use the carbon blocks from bulk reef supply. I have two installed in my drip system and it removes both chlorine and chloramine which my city uses. with a addfitional sediment filter i average about 3 months between cartridge changes and i change just under 125 gallons daily. If you reaaly want to be safe you can also add a small dosing pump that u can find on amazon......i originally did this and was dosing 1ml of diluted pond prime and water an hour but i eventually took it out.....the carbon blocks were doing the job just fine

Thanks man. Because I swore I read a whole back that my city used chloramines, I actually setup a 4-filter system configured with 1 sediment and 3 carbons because of how paranoid I am!

Since I only have chlorine, and am sticking with the 4 filters, hopefully I'll be changing the filter less frequently? I'm planning on 8gph a day on my 400ish to change about 192 gallons a day so my fish have great water.