Ammonia in RO/DI

[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

[Psyire]

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

[TheReefGeek]

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

[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

[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/Albe...eWTProcess.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/Commer...ry+Reports.htm

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

http://www.epcor.ca/Customers/Commer...tyGlossary.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).