Portland water is poison.

[Micah]

Title is mostly clickbait, but...  I've been living on Portland water (or at least chloramine infested city water) for my 16-17 years of reef experience.  RODI takes everything out though, right?

I call BS.  I just moved to farmland and am on a well. I just put the SAME RODI UNIT on the well water and I've been running my tank on it since.  My tank has never been more successful. I waited a month to post anything because it could have just been the 80% water change.  I moved two tanks.  All fed from the same RODI unit.  Everything is puffy, coral are all happy, anemones are nuts and not randomly splitting thus far, etc.  

My RODI unit is as follows:

source well water (from water softener) --> dual high flow sediment filter (cheap amazon ones) --> GE Sediment filter --> BRS universal carbon block --> BRS universal carbon block --> chloraguard carbon block --> DOW 75gpd membrane x2 (parallel) --> anion resin --> cation resin --> mixed bed resin --> product water.

Pre move:

source city water --> dual high flow sediment filter (cheap amazon ones) --> GE Sediment filter --> BRS universal carbon block --> BRS universal carbon block --> DOW 75gpd membrane x2 (parallel) --> anion resin --> cation resin --> mixed bed resin --> product water.

 

TLDR is that the only change is the city water and that I removed the chloramine specific carbon block at the new location. 

 

Thoughts?

--Micah

[AquaKey]

I'd think if the chloramines were making it past your carbon filter it'd begin degrading the ro membrane and start burning up the DI resin prematurely. 

There might be other factors in play because of the move. Replenishment of major/minor elements, different PO4 NO3 levels now, etc. I saw the biggest improvement in corals getting fluffy when I boosted my nutrient level. 

Just some thoughts. Hard to say without an ICP before and after but your rodi should've been filtering out chloramines. 

[Electrokate]

Portland water in much of the year is Bull Run water. This is good, though a bit heavily buffered, most of the year. Other times, I have lost a lot of fish to it and probably coral. Right now half my SPS is dying, and I have ruled out what I can leaving toxic water on the list pretty high. Freshwater shrimp stopped breeding too. The key thing is that whenever they feel the need the water dept people can and do with no notification drastically increase the amount of ammonia to stabilize the chorine. Sometimes they jack both. This is done after work on lines, such as repairs or flushing, but can be for non specified reasons. They do notify manufacturers dependent on RO units so they don't blow their membranes and or product, but not private people. If you call they will refuse to give more info than what I just said, then say you people are supposed to do testing for your animals. That is what they told me. I lost animals that are no longer available directly due to ammonia coming out of the tap turning the ammonia test kit too high to read. 

The other thing Portland does is when Bull Run is being for whatever reason not available ie runoff, sediment, work on the system, low water, fire debris running with the rain, animal waste containing who knows what, and pretty much the entirety of August in the past but now much of the summer-they switch to the well field which in my mind is the mine field. It's the water under the industrial area from the airport east along the river, below the slough. Land that in the past was so toxic that the US had actual motivation to look at legislation around dumping industrial waste into the groundwater a city depends on, course that isn't really all that popular these days. And who knows what is going into the water from the homeless camps, just glad our meth isn't made locally much anymore. 

The good water-Bull Run-that mostly will be when the weather is cooler than 85 from what they told me. The chloramine will be at the level our RO units are meant to handle at about 80 degrees or cooler. 

So, basically, yeah. Summer water in Portland is pretty bad. I am losing coral I have had since about 2004. I am not going to replace it. Finally got the tank I always wanted... probably going to end up with softies. Hopefully not FOWLR.

Kate

[Pdxjaredreefguy]

Isn’t RO/DI water the same if the equipment is good. It’s 0 tpi or it isn’t. 

[Micah]

Not everything counts as a dissolved solid or can be tested as such. Chlorine and ammonia (chloramine) tend to not show on a TDS test.  

TDS is just a conductivity test.  

[Kerbash]

I just dump my dehumidifier waste water back into the tank as a top off 😛 Recycle!

[half-astronaut]

On 10/3/2022 at 6:36 PM, Kerbash said:

I just dump my dehumidifier waste water back into the tank as a top off 😛 Recycle!

That seems like copper poisoning waiting to happen. 

[BaghdadBean]

Pretty sure RO/DI doesn’t actually remove everything.  It gets a good percentage of things, but you can’t really get all of it unless it’s super clean water to begin with or you’re running multiple membranes. 

 

[ClownF1sh]

half-astronaut is totally right, using a dehumidifier can lead to a few pollutants getting into the tank, there's some discussion on this in the reef2reef forum. I would not put dehumidifier water in the tank, just use it to water house plants or things outside and get the good stuff for the fishies!

Edited October 5, 2022 by ClownF1sh

[Kerbash]

12 hours ago, half-astronaut said:

That seems like copper poisoning waiting to happen. 

huh, i never thought about that, been doing it for years now, ill do some more research