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Cloram X Question

I have a question about Cloram X. I used it to treat 200 gallons of 3 ppm chloramine treated water from the local public utility on Tuesday last week. Prior to that, the water had been sitting in my fish tank for 3 weeks and circulating for a couple of hours each day. I didn't have my gravel beds yet, so I did not see a need to circulate it continuously.

I finished the gravel beds Friday. I innoculated the water with 3 TBSP of fish emulsion and have been on a 15 minute on and 45 minute off cycles since then.

I've been monitoring the water quality since Friday and everything has been 0 ppm so far for ammonia, nitrate, nitrate, and phosphate until today. Although ammonia is near 0, I noticed the nitrites are just under the .25 ppm today. Is that normal? It was understanding that ammonia usually rises first.

I am wondering how I have nitrite activity, but no measurable ammonia yet.

Could it be that the Cloram X is skewing the measurements? Has anyone experienced that with Cloram X.

Ph appears a little on the high side at 8 and closer to 9 than to 7. I was at the hydroponic supply store Saturday and should have picked up some Ph down, but didn't.

I am using a pond water testing kit. It apparently is a little different than the kits most of you use, but it's the best one they had available at the local Aquaculture Supply Store near my home and the one they recommended.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on May 9, 2011 at 6:14pm

Hum. Odd that you didn't see ammonia. I actually would have expected to see some ammonia from neutralizing the chloramine but I don't know anything about the product really. I always had a vague notion that when you neutralize the chlorine in chloramine treated water that you would wind up with some ppm of ammonia left over from the chemical reaction.

(did you test for ammonia after using the CloramX?, I suppose it's possible that you actually had an ammonia spike that you sort of missed.)

3 TBSP of fish emulsion may be giving you a very slow release of ammonia perhaps so low that you test kit isn't catching it but none the less you are getting conversion of ammonia to nitrite and because the nitrite spike and subsequent bacteria that take care of that are always slower you are actually seeing the rise in nitrite.

I don't know the kit you speak of so I can't comment much about it. Sounds like the pH indication isn't all that fine, you might want to stop by the aquarium section of the pet store and get the API pH test kit (probably should get both the regular pH test kit and the High Range pH test kit for fresh water.) You want to be able to tell pH to within 0.2 since you don't want to adjust more than that per day if you are going to try to adjust you pH. The regular API pH test measures from 6.0-7.6 and the high range test shows 7.4-8.8.

You want your pH somewhere between 7.0 and 8.0 for initial cycle up and generally as you get cycled up the pH will drop naturally and you need to be ready to buffer it to keep it from dropping below 6.5.

However, don't touch the acid if you can't measure the pH pretty closely.

Permalink Reply by B. Pearcy on May 9, 2011 at 7:02pm

Jon,

Any idea how to test it?

Permalink Reply by B. Pearcy on May 9, 2011 at 8:41pm

Thanks Jon,

I am using river gravel.

Permalink Reply by B. Pearcy on May 16, 2011 at 6:09pm

I am still struggling with how to test ammonia in my new system as it cycles up. I used ClorAm-X® to treat the chloramine in my water and after trying several of the common ammonia testing kits which all register 0 ammonia, I've ordered a SeaChem product that will supposedly cure my frustration.

Here's an explanation from SeaChem via Amazon.com regarding why the Nessler's testing kits are sometimes unreliable with products like ClorAm-X®:

SeaChem Multitest: Ammonia Test KitThis kit measures total (NH3 and NH4+) and free ammonia (NH3 only) down to 0.05 mg/L and is virtually interference free in marine and fresh water. Free ammonia is the toxic form of ammonia (vs. ionized Ammonia NH4+ which is non-toxic) and thus it is much more important to keep an eye on the level of free ammonia in your system. This kit is based on the same gas exchange technology that is used in the Ammonia Alert and thus is the only kit on the market that can read levels of free ammonia while using ammonia removal products such as Prime, Safe, AmGuard and any similar competing products. The other kits (salicylate or Nessler based) determine the total ammonia by raising the pH of the test solution to 12 or greater. At this high pH all ammonia removal products will breakdown and rerelease the ammonia, thus giving you a false ammonia reading. multi-cavity plate for simultaneous testing of up to 6 tests at the same time sensor based, sensitive to less than 0.01 mg/L includes reference for test validation marine or fresh water Range: 0.0 - 6.0 mg/L Precision: 0.01 - 0.1 mg/L.

Permalink Reply by Lonny Harper on May 17, 2011 at 11:55pm

I haven't finished building my system yet. I live in Southern California, and I have no option other than horrible city water. I do have an all house water softener, but that puts sodium in the water. Should I use my treated tap, untreated tap, or should I invest in an Reverse Osmosis filter?

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on May 18, 2011 at 5:47pm

How much sodium does your softener put in the water?

Permalink Reply by Lonny Harper on May 18, 2011 at 6:20pm

hmmm, I don't currently have a way of testing that. Would a ppm meter tell me?

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on May 18, 2011 at 8:19pm

If you have a TDS or EC meter like used for hydroponics, it might tell you if the salt level from your softener is likely to build up salt in your system. Dip it in and see if you get a reading on your softened water. I think my water softener (before I got rid of it) made a difference down in the bottom two reading levels on my Truencheon. Might even be worth it to do the initial fill up with softened water since a small amount of salt isn't a bad thing for new fish in a system especially if you need to protect them from nitrite toxicity.

However, if you get a high reading off an EC meter from your tap water or softened water, you may not want to use it regularly in top ups.

Permalink Reply by Lonny Harper on May 18, 2011 at 10:01pm

Okay, I have to admit I am over my head in water quality issues. I feel like I have a grasp on all aspects of aquaponics except water quality - alkalinity, ph, ec, ppm's, calcium...Is there a basic tutuorial somewhere so I can try and get a grasp on this?

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on May 19, 2011 at 8:14am

Hum, well if you are already understanding the nitrogen cycle, that is the main thing. Now I generally would not mess with hydroponics EC or TDS meters and the ppms from those as they are not very useful to aquaponics (except perhaps as a way to estimate salt levels if you happen to have one and don't have access to another way to test the salt levels.)

pH and Alkalinity are only sort of related to calcium in that very often water's hardness will come from calcium carbonate (limestone or shells) Or calcium hydroxide. Most tap water is going to have a higher pH and some alkalinity if it either comes from a well from a limestone aquifer or if your city water is treated the pH is often adjusted up to help the chlorine work better and to help keep from corroding the pipes in the water system. However, if your source water is from rain, it will be pretty devoid of alkalinity (unless your catchment tank is concrete or something.)

I'll have to look around to see if there is a good tutorial. My general advice is that you want to play with your pH test kit a bit. Check your tap water pH right away out of the tap and then test again a day after bubbling the water or at least letting it sit out. See there are some tricks that tap water can play on you by having dissolved carbon Dioxide trapped in it so when you first test your water pH it may say 7 and you think "all right perfect!" and then a day later you test your system pH and freek out cause the pH is 8.2!!!!! Ack, probably when you first tested the water the dissolved CO2 gave you a false low reading and it may not be your system that raised the pH but the escaping CO2.

Now Aquaponics is a balance as they say. The bacteria and fish are generally happy with a higher pH that hard or alkali water will help hold but the plants would rather a lower pH so they can more easily get all the nutrients they like. The bacteria will over time use up the alkalinity or hardness from the water and the pH will generally drop in time causing us to need to adjust the pH periodically.

Does this help? If your water is drinkable, you just need to find out if it is treated with chlorine or chloramine. If Chlorine you can bubble it out in a few days. If Chloramine you will either need to filter (carbon filters of some sort) it out or neutralize (need to do some research into appropriate chemicals and what they do to your ability to test for ammonia) it before starting up a system.

Have some shell grit or garden lime on hand to mix up to buffer your water pH up later after it starts to fall.

That is just how I do things, others have different advice I'm sure.

Permalink Reply by Lonny Harper on May 22, 2011 at 12:26am

That's good advice...I'm close to having my beds built. I have samples of plain water and samples with different gravels to find out what they will do to the ph. My next purchase is a PH meter.

thanks TC

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on May 22, 2011 at 7:03am

The pH test kits in the freshwater master test kit is pretty good. I don't trust pH meters that much since you have to also buy calibration solutions, and buffer/cleaning/storage solutions and even then replacing the probes regularly and after all that, I've had pH meters help me crash hydroponics systems badly when they quit working and I didn't realize it wasn't working until I had already brought the pH down to 4!!!