Ammonia in RO/DI

[Beverly]

A few weeks ago, I checked the water coming out of our RO/DI unit for ammonia. It measured .5 ppm! So we changed all four membranes in the unit last week. This morning, checked ammonia again, and it's still .5 ppm!!

Could other folks in Edmonton check the water coming directly from their RO or RO/DI units for ammonia?

Am wondering why the membranes are not removing all the ammonia from our chloramine-treated tapwater. Chloramine in untreated Edmonton tapwater is about 1 ppm (tested it for someone on a recent thread who was having trouble with their tank).


Thanks :smile:

[Willow]

did you test am in your tapwater?

[Gizmo]

I'll test mine when I get home for ya bev.

[Beverly]

did you test am in your tapwater?

Yup. It states in my post that ammonia in tapwater is 1 ppm (maybe I didn't make myself clear on that). Ammonia in Edmonton tapwater is due to it being treated with chloramine, which is a compound of chlorine and ammonia.

Thanks, Giz. Looking forward to what you find out.

[Willow]

yeah actually what you said was "Chloramine in untreated Edmonton tapwater is about 1 ppm". i asked if you tested ammonia in your tap water.

figure it out yourself

[TheReefGeek]

I will try to remember to test some of my RODI water for you tonight Bev, I just ran 30g last night I will test it tonight.

[Aquattro]

Bev, Hagen kit?

[Beverly]

Bev, Hagen kit?

Aquarium Pharmaceuticals kit.

[Gizmo]

My test kit is good to .20ppm and it reads on the 0ppm color. so it is probably less than .10 Sorry Bev

[StirCrazy]

Yup. It states in my post that ammonia in tapwater is 1 ppm (maybe I didn't make myself clear on that). Ammonia in Edmonton tapwater is due to it being treated with chloramine, which is a compound of chlorine and ammonia.

Thanks, Giz. Looking forward to what you find out.

and the worst part is you are letting chlorine to your membrain which will eventualy destroy them.

we had a big thread on chlorimeans and what is required to break them up and remove the chlorine and one carbon filter isn't going to do it. I run two carbon block filters and it barly works on mine and doesn't last that long (3 to 4 months) I am going to be putting two granular carbon filters befor the carbon blocks which should get me up to the 8 to 12 month mark. Carbon block are nice but they do not remove stuff as good as granular carbon.

Steve

[Beverly]

Thanks for the reply, Steve, even though it's bad news.

Just tried the search function to locate the thread you were talking about, but it's not working right now. Can you give me an approximate date for the thread I'd be looking for? I do not remember seeing it.

Also, I know nothing about RO/DI stuff. Chris looks after that part of our reefing endeavor. He's busy tonight and tomorrow night, but I've told him basically what you've said. He will probably contact you via this thread or by PM to talk more about this issue, if that's okay with you.

Dang!!!! But, thanks :smile:

[StirCrazy]

I can't remember probably about a year ago or longer.. come to think of it maybe 2 or more as it was shortly after I bought my new house. it was more or less a statment on the effects of chlorimene and how hard it actualy is to seperate the chlorine and amonia (something like I just said.) no great volumes of wisdom from what I can remember.. that is the time frame when I switched to two carbon block filters.

what I run now is one "big blue" 25 to 1 micron graduated sedimat filter, then two carbon blocks (inline) then my two 160GPD membrains.

so I am basicly going to add two more granulated carbon stages befor the carbon blocks.

something that will work good but is expensive is run your DI befor the membrains.. personaly I wouldn't do it due to the cost but I have heard it removes chloramin like a hot damn.

Steve

[Beverly]

The search function works if you use it correctly :razz:

This is the thread I found....

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=6577&highlight=chloramine

which has a link to Reefkeeping Magazine's article on chloramine....

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

The funny thing is that our reefs are doing great. Now that I'm paying attention to alk, Ca and Mg, corals and coralline algae are booming. Fish are in good health as well.

[Beverly]

Another article on RO/DI units from Reefkeeping Magazine....

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-05/rhf/index.php



Well, my hair was on fire yesterday over the .5 ppm ammonia in our RO/DI water.

Today, I'm not so sure this is such a huge issue. We've kept reefs since 1999. Chloramine has been in Edmonton's water long before we began reefkeeping. Up until 2003, we used RO water. When we moved to our new condo in Feb 2003, we switched to RO/DI.

In all that time, we did not appear to have any problems with the water going into our various tanks, ranging from 2.5g and 7g nanos, to our old 180g, to our present 37g, 67g and 120g reefs. For awile, we kept seahorses using this water. Overall, fish have been in good health, unless we introduced sick fish to a tank, or unless we experienced toxic events from dead exotic inverts. Corals, for the most part, have also been in good health, though in the early years we were not particularly aware on proper reef chemistry and I'm sure they all could have used better care in that area. Inverts have been doing well, too.

So now we find out that our RO/DI water has .5 ppm ammonia. It has probably always been present and we simply did not know about it. What are we going to do now that we have more knowledge? I don't know. Dear husband will read the articles and threads, maybe ask some questions and implement a few solutions, like an inline TDS meter, and more frequent filter/membrane changes. Or, we may continue on doing as we have always done and maybe just add Prime to the water after salting it.

I would still like as many Edmonton reefers as possible to check the ammonia coming out of their RO or RO/DI units and report it to this thread. I'm kind of wondering why only Gizmo has tested his water. Maybe the "ignorance is bliss" attitude may be at work here, or folks haven't read the thread, or nobody wants to take 7 minutes out of their busy schedules to test their water, though these are obviously just guesses.

Anyway, Edmonton reefers, PLEASE test your RO or RO/DI water for ammonia and post your findings to this thread!

TIA :smile:

[Psyire]

Is someone able to do this test with a salifert kit?

[mark]

Live in the NE and have zero NH3 in the tap, rodi output and tank water.

Few things from this thread.
-even if there was ammonia in the tap, thought the purpose of the ro/di unit was to filter everything harmful out
-the comment that the membrane is damaged by chlorine, the prefilters remove 100 % of the chlorine then
-Aquasafe recommends changing filters every 6 months, if they go past their life, do they block up or start passing stuff?

[mr_alberta]

They will do both. The used up carbon filters will allow more chemicals to pass and the sediment cartridge will plug up.

I'd test my water, but I don't own a test kit :eek:

[TheReefGeek]

I thought I had a salifert ammonia test, but only a nitrate one. My ammonia is a hagen :(

[Beverly]

Mark,

Surprised that you don't get any ammonia readings from testing the tapwater. What kit are you using? I get about 1 ppp ammonia using an Aquarium Pharmaceuticals kit. When I add Prime to tapwater, I get 0 ppm ammonia.

BTW, ammonia is definitely added to Edmonton's water. It is added to chlorine to make the disinfecting properties of chlorine longer lasting and more effective. The chlorine/ammonia compound is called chloramine. Chloramine has been in Edmonton's drinking water for quite awhile, longer than I have been reefkeeping since 1999.

Epcor's E.L. Smith Water Treatment Process, where it shows where in the water treatment process chlorine and ammonia are added ....

http://www.epcor.ca/Communities/Alberta/Operations/Water+Treatment+Plants/EL+Smith/StrathmoreWTProcess.htm

2005 Monthly Water Quality Summary Reports, pick a month and look for Total Residual Chlorine. This is how Epcor reports chloramine, which isn't very useful to us as aquarists, but what are you gonna do....

http://www.epcor.ca/Customers/Commercial+and+Industrial/waterprodserv/Water+Quality+Reports/Monthly+Water+Quality+Summary+Reports.htm

Epcor's Water Quality Glossary of Terms....

http://www.epcor.ca/Customers/Commercial+and+Industrial/waterprodserv/Water+Quality+Reports/WaterQualityGlossary.htm

Have just been on the phone with a guy from Epcor. He said chloramine, chlorine and ammonia are not listed as such, but to look for Chlorine, (Total Residual) in the Glossary of Terms page (above).

[Beverly]

I'd test my water, but I don't own a test kit :eek:

Ack!! How can that be? I'll test your water if you bring samples over.

Rory,

Test it with the Hagen one and see what you get. Test both tapwater and RO water, if you wouldn't mind.

[TheReefGeek]

Will do. Might not be until tommorow night though.

[mark]

Using a Hagen NH3 test kit.

Increments from 0.0; 0.1, 0.3, 0.6, 1.2,...

Never been a fan of these colour matching tests (that's why I switched to Salifert for pH) but I read it as 0.0, maybe 0.1 but definitely not matching 0.3.

[mark]

If chlorine and ammonia bind to form chloramine, can the ammonia component still be accurately measured using a ammonia only test?

[StirCrazy]

If chlorine and ammonia bind to form chloramine, can the ammonia component still be accurately measured using a ammonia only test?

nope, well not by our test kits anyways.

Steve

[Beverly]

Mark,

Did you measure ammonia in your tapwater as well as ammonia coming out of your RO unit with your Hagen kit?

Steve,

If it's true that our test kits do not measure ammonia in the chloramine molecule, why am I measuring 1 ppm ammonia from my tapwater, and .5 ppm from my RO/DI water with my Aquarium Pharmaceuticals kit?

When I first started keeping FW fish in 1998, I used to have an Aquarium Pharmaceuticals chlorine test kit that would measure slightly more chlorine than ammonia in Edmonton's tapwater. Chlorine and ammonia test results seemed to jive with what an Epcor lab guy told me back then about there being more chlorine added than ammonia, and that there was free chlorine in our water supply along with chloramine. The lab guy explained why they added more chlorine than ammonia, but I can't remember why that was.

[mark]

Mark,

Did you measure ammonia in your tapwater as well as ammonia coming out of your RO unit with your Hagen kit?



Same kit (Hagen) same time on both samples. Might give you 0.1 but l'm leaning 0.0.

[StirCrazy]

Steve,

If it's true that our test kits do not measure ammonia in the chloramine molecule, why am I measuring 1 ppm ammonia from my tapwater, and .5 ppm from my RO/DI water with my Aquarium Pharmaceuticals kit?



the reply was to "can it be measured accurately" yes you can measure it but not accurately.. I would guess the levels will be higher than we actually get as a reading.

Steve

[Beverly]

Same kit (Hagen) same time on both samples. Might give you 0.1 but l'm leaning 0.0.

Thanks for checking, Mark :smile:

Don't think I'm going to be using Hagen ammonia kits anytime soon, though.

[Salinity Now]

Hey Beverly, first of all I had to wipe all of the dust off my Hagen test kit :lol:. Wow, it's been a while. Any whoo, here's the results.

Straight from the tap =

Somewhere between 0.6 and 1.2. Eeeeewwwww!

After the Ro/Di unit =

Somewhere between 0.0 and 0.1. Hard to tell thou, all the colours look damn near the same? No wonder I don't use Hagen test kits anymore.

Wheeeeeew, that was close. I almost thought I'd have to get up off my ammonia maker and change my cartridges.

P.s.
this little excersise took longer than 7 minutes. :razz:

[Beverly]

Finally found the solution to our ammonia problem. Should be able to order it from J&L.....

http://www.aquariumwaterfilters.com/component/option,com_phpshop/Itemid,1/page,shop.product_details/flypage,shop.flypage/product_id,70/category_id,11/