Chloramines and Nitrates - water quality question

[Ryan S.]

As I have done more research on the chemistry of water, I just now have come to understand that what makes Chloramines so much more difficult to deal with than Chlorine by itself is that Chloramines is chlorine bonded with ammonia.  So when you treat water with Chloramines, you are essentially just breaking the bond of the Chlorine/Ammonia and then the chlorine can be handled by the chemicals (prime) and it leaves the ammonia to be handled by your biological filtration in your tank.  Is this correct?

When I change water in my tanks I notice that is very hard to get the nitrates in the water to lower.  Based on my understanding of the above, that is due to the chloramine my city water is treated with.  Essentially, this means even though I am putting in new water, because the new water contains ammonia (after I treat with Prime), the new water gets cycled by my biological filter when added and spits back out immediately as Nitrate.  Am I tracking this correctly?  

Ok so my real question - How do I get water to my tank without any effect of the Chloramine?  Is the only way to get an RODI system that filters out everything into pure water?  Does running my water through a chloramine pre-filter do anything or does it have to be a full RODI system to fully remove both parts of the chemical compound?

Really appreciate any help the nerm crew can provide!

Edited February 17, 2021 by Ryan S.
typo

[MJV Aquatics]

1 minute ago, Ryan S. said:

So when you treat water with Chloramines, you are essentially just breaking the bond of the Chlorine/Ammonia and then the chlorine can be handled by the chemicals (prime) and it leaves the ammonia to be handled by your biological filtration in your tank.  Is this correct?

Actually the water conditioner breaks the chlorine/ammonia bond and converts the ammonia to non-toxic ammonium, that the bio filter converts to nitrite, then nitrate. (although ammonium tests as ammonia)

One answer is plants, especially fast growing floating plants. Plants prefer ammonia as their nitrogen source and will convert the ammonia into plant tissue, eventually removed with trimming. Floating plants are especially great as they do well under almost any light where substrate/rooted plants may require higher intensity light.

There are chemical medias (resins) that adsorb ammonia, but I'd go with plants.

Also, and I'm sure up for debate, is that source nitrates from chloramine is less negative than tank nitrates from decomposition as tank nitrates keep bad company with other  pollutants. We just can't measure for other pollutants.

[ScottieB]

Also consider the tap water as a source of nitrates. I’m in Kansas and my nitrates might be 20-30 coming out of the tap. And keep in mind that’s only what we can test for. Makes it impossible to reduce nitrates with just water changes. 

Full RO water is the only reliable way to get rid of all that stuff but has its own set of issues since it has no buffering capacity and can’t really just be used for water changes. 

Plants, for sure though. Also aging the water in containers (maybe with plants?) might help. 

[Fish Folk]

How much water do you change out? How soon after water changing do you run your tests? What testing method / tools do you use? (Strips? Master test kit? Other?) Do you dose any fertilizers in your tank? Are there root tabs? Is it a planted tank? What size tank is it?

You might try a conditioner like Fritz Complete. It _may_ scorch-earth treat everything. Floating plants such as water lettuce could help, as @MJV Aquatics recommends. More plants are usually good 🌱 🪴 
 

I’d also suggest trying some experiments on your tap water to confirm your study, and add new relevant data. Try setting up four clean buckets, and filling with tap water. In bucket 1, do nothing. In bucket 2, add tap water plus a rapid flow air stone. In bucket three, add your normal water conditioner (Prime, etc). In the fourth, add conditioner plus an airstone. Leave for 24 hrs, and separately test parameters on all four. Wait another 24 hrs (48 hrs total) and test a second time. You want to measure the effect of “resting” water from your tap. 
 

With respect to ammonium vs ammonia, it may be relevant to check your pH. I’m not completely clear on this, but I _think_ that ammonium converts to ammonia if pH is basic (increasingly so, as water is pH 7.0 >> 8.2). Somewhere down near 6.4 pH, there is enough hydrogen ions to convert ammonia over to ammonium. 

Edited February 17, 2021 by Fish Folk

[Ryan S.]

1 minute ago, ScottieB said:

Also consider the tap water as a source of nitrates. I’m in Kansas and my nitrates might be 20-30 coming out of the tap. And keep in mind that’s only what we can test for. Makes it impossible to reduce nitrates with just water changes. 

Full RO water is the only reliable way to get rid of all that stuff but has its own set of issues since it has no buffering capacity and can’t really just be used for water changes. 

Plants, for sure though. Also aging the water in containers (maybe with plants?) might help. 

Holy cow, I'm in Kansas too so this probably means I'm dealing with the same thing or at least something very similar.  I am in the Kansas City area.  Had a couple of seasoned fish keepers that warned me early on that our tap water wasn't the greatest for fish keeping.  It's not like I am unsuccessful as a fish keeper using the tap water, but I also don't feel like its an ideal environment either.  

I do run plants in all of my tanks, but haven't really been able to make much of a dent in nitrates doing this.  Maybe I just need to find the right combo of plants or go the RODI route with a good remineralization technique.  Thanks for the info @ScottieB and @MJV Aquatics

[Ryan S.]

45 minutes ago, Fish Folk said:

How much water do you change out? How soon after water changing do you run your tests? What testing method / tools do you use? (Strips? Master test kit? Other?) Do you dose any fertilizers in your tank? Are there root tabs? Is it a planted tank? What size tank is it?

 

Good questions - I typically try to change somewhere between 20-40% in my tanks.  The tanks I have had the longest and therefore, have done the most water changes/testing on are a 36 gallon bowfront (change 10-15 gallons - heavily planted w/ eco complete, root tabs, and once a week easy green) and a 20 long (change 5-8 gallons - lightly planted w/ peace river, no root tabs, very little easy green).  I have the API test kit as well as the Tetra test strips.  I typically have retested the water about a day after performing the water change.  It has NOT been scientific, just something I have noticed as I can't get much of a drop in my nitrates.  I think that experiment you mention would be fun to run, maybe I can do that here at some point in the next week or two and report back.  

[MJV Aquatics]

1 hour ago, ScottieB said:

Also consider the tap water as a source of nitrates. I’m in Kansas and my nitrates might be 20-30 coming out of the tap

More and more, especially in agricultural areas, there are nitrates in source water. I don't have to deal with chlorine or chloramine, but I have high nitrates in my well water most likely due to the 95 acre farmers field across the road. I repurposed an API Tap Water filter using API Nitra-Zorb resin to pre-filter water to remove nitrates. I Wrote an article called My Nitrate Fight.

[CT_]

3 hours ago, Ryan S. said:

Essentially, this means even though I am putting in new water, because the new water contains ammonia (after I treat with Prime), the new water gets cycled by my biological filter when added and spits back out immediately as Nitrate.  Am I tracking this correctly?  

This sounds right.  Out of curiosity what numbers are you talking about.  1ppm of ammonia gets eventually converted to 3.6 ppm nitrate (their molar mass is different).

For example, if you had 1ppm ammonia from your chloramine and 100 ppm nitrate you should be able to dilute that out.  but if you had 5ppm nitrate trying to dilute that out would be significantly harder

 

2 hours ago, MJV Aquatics said:

Actually the water conditioner breaks the chlorine/ammonia bond and converts the ammonia to non-toxic ammonium

I've heard that a few times but I don't think I understand the chemistry there. 

I can't figure out whats in prime (the one most associated with that claim) but the MSDS for ammolock says it has alphatic amine salts.  If I understand right that would convert some NH3 (ammonia) to NH2-, not NH4+.

[Celly Rasbora]

What is in Wonder Shells that removes chlorine? I did a cursory google search, but didn't find anything.

Edited February 17, 2021 by Celly Rasbora

[Ryan S.]

2 hours ago, MJV Aquatics said:

More and more, especially in agricultural areas, there are nitrates in source water. I don't have to deal with chlorine or chloramine, but I have high nitrates in my well water most likely due to the 95 acre farmers field across the road. I repurposed an API Tap Water filter using API Nitra-Zorb resin to pre-filter water to remove nitrates. I Wrote an article called My Nitrate Fight.

Thats a pretty cool idea, thanks for pointing me to the article!  Good to know this is an option! Have been thinking of putting in a DIY filter system to take out particulates and chloramine from my water so I didn't have to use a conditioner using Bill's idea from the no more Declor thread a couple of months back.  Would be pretty easy to put nitra-zorb into the system in a separate canister as a part of this system I think. 

[MJV Aquatics]

4 minutes ago, Ryan S. said:

Would be pretty easy to put nitra-zorb into the system in a separate canister as a part of this system I think. 

The beauty of the nitra-zorb resin is that it is rechargeable with ordinary (non-iodized) salt water. I've gotten thousands of gallons of nitrate free water from the same resin - I simply recharge every 200 gallons or so. Anyway, you want to use it as a pre-filter for fresh water as the resin can be compromised if/when coated with detritus (from tank water) and I'm uncertain if it can be reclaimed with bleach/water like Purigen.

[MJV Aquatics]

1 hour ago, CT_ said:

I've heard that a few times but I don't think I understand the chemistry there. 

I'm equally unsure about the chemistry of 'detoxifying heavy metals' and Seachem is very guarded about how it works, perhaps 'trade secrets'.