Water Emergency--please read!

[H.crispa]

Hey gang, this has been going on for a while but being reefers, a lot of us may not have changed water since this all began and you may be contemplating a water change soon. The freshwater folks are going nuts lately because they tend to do more H2O changes (gotta admit its cheap w/freshwater and effective and I do them with wreckless abandon in the freshie tanks I care for). From what I hear, there is some kind of funk (pathogenic bacteria for you geeks out there) in the water and the local water companies have put anti-funk funk (anti-microbial stuff) in the water to kill it. I hope I'm not being too technical... "funk" and "stuff" are terms I normally reserve for my frequent deeply intellectual conversations with Steven Hawking.

Unfortunately for us, the anti-funk funk also indiscriminately
kills the bacteria we rely on to make our systems work. I personally know two people who have had well-established tanks crash from this. I have also had a tank I care for at River's Edge restaurant crash. New tank syndrome in a tank established for over 10 years. I think the pet store has had a lot of calls as well from people experiencing this-- Ron can verify (or not). Good news is this is preventable.

The two tanks at the restaurant that WERE NOT AFFECTED were using carbon. The one that crashed was not. I fixed that. My advice is to use an RO unit, to use bottled or distilled water or barring that, to circulate your water through carbon for 24 hours prior to mixing it with the salt mix. I make no claims as to the effectiveness of the carbon, my evidence on it is purely anecdotal but it does make sense. Also, I don't know if this crisis has passed or not. As a matter of fact, I have not personally spoken to the water company at all, so I strongly recommend that you all call the water company to ask what is going on. Even if my information is incorrect as to the cause, there is clearly SOMETHING going on as there are too many cases for this to be coincidence. Bottom line is-- be careful!

[Curtis1]

Is this for everyones water, or just your area ???? Not to worry, I just got a RO/DI unit. How often, and what % of water do you guys change in your SW tanks ??? I try to change at least 6 to 9 gal every week.

[MattG]

20 gallons every 2 weeks here

[LowCel]

Not nearly enough here until recently. Now the past few days I have been changing it on a daily basis.

Once I get things back to normal I will try to get myself in the habit of changing ten gallons a week.

[hmott]

I change about 5 gallons every week, and about 10 gallons every other time.

[coralreefer]

Boy you guys, well most of you Bruce :) do a lot of water changes. Just curious why the smaller, more frequent changes

45 gallons every 4 weeks but I'm probably going to back down to about 35 gallons, 20%, next month.


Curt does Greenup have there own water plant or do they buy water from Ashland? We did a water change Sunday with no problems.

I wonder if the "funk" is related to all the run-off and flooding from up river last month?

[MattG]

Originally posted by coralreefer
Boy you guys, well most of you Bruce do a lot of water changes.

call me sick but i kind of enjoy doing water changes

[coralreefer]

OK...you're SICK :eek:
Ya know I had to do that

[LowCel]

I'd have to agree with ya on that one Amy.

I did just buy a new hose today at Home Depot though to siphon the water out rather than use buckets, made like a whole lot easier.

Just for the record, so far in the past three days I have changed 22.5 gallons. :D

[Curtis1]

Ok you guys,,, here's one of my brainfarts ! This like all other inventions was the product of necessity. I was using a section of hose trying to start the syphon and ripped my LR pile and corals off the top !!! A sailor could have added a few more off-colored, choice words to his vocabulary that afternoon !!!! So I got me one of them Kerosene syphon pumps and put a 5' section of hose on it, the exit side. I'm not suppose to be telling you about this because I have applied for a patent. The patent search still hasn't come back yet. But anyway, it works great !!! The part that goes into the tank is about 2' long and stiff, you can reach it into all kinds of places. I use it to clean around and on corals like Star Polyps, it will vac up algae from the substrate and I let the Valonia bubbles get big enough to pop, then I just cram it into them and it syphons up all of the spores when it bursts !!! I think that I probably have less than 10 small bubbles left. All you do is stick it in the water, squeeze the bulb primer 3-4 times and presto !!! To stop the syphon, just unscrew the knob ontop to break the syphon. I took it down to Bert's and let Jim test it, he said that it works great, to bring some in, that he could sell them !!! After the test, this guy that was standing there watching the whole time, casually strolls over and asks, "Where did you get that ? ", I told him I made it, then he turns and walks away. Meanwhile, I'm standing there slobbering and droolling over all the tanks. This guy walks all the way out the parking lot to his car, gets one of his business cards, comes back in, catches Jim busy and me off to the side, sneaks over and hands it too me. He then tells me that he is a sales rep for a major pet supply distributor in Cinn. He said that when I get a bunch of these packaged and ready to ship, to call him, that he would be able to sell a ton of'em !!! Said that they were the simplest and best working of all the designs that he had seen, I'm sure he's seen them all ! He said that he had a reef-tank and was still having trouble with getting use to the hose and starting the syphon, but that a newbie could easily use this , the first attempt ! Anyway, you guys try this and LMK what you think.

[Curtis1]

Oh, Amy, I'm pretty sure that they buy thier water from Wurtland Water Plant. But we are down river .

[MattG]

is this the siphon you are using curtis?
siphon link (http://www.lowes.com/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=34416-000001699-DH-20#)

[Curtis1]

Close but no cookie ! No batteries needed, just get the hand/manual primed model, should be able to get it at any hardware store $3-$5 bucks. Chances are any convenient store that sells kerosene will probably have them.

[firefish2020]

I can verify that something strange "seems" to be going on. It seems localized to the St. Albans area as of now. But basically it's like Crispa said, someone does a change and soon after that his or her tank goes down. Im not 100% sure its an ongoing thing may be related to several things, flooding, pollution, even the off chance of an injection of some sort of anti-bacteria into the water supply to thwart the spread of diseases in the face of the so called flu shot shortage, I don’t know all I know is it has happened in the past 2 months or so to at least four people now and all the signs are identical. May be something may be nothing. No change at the shop, and no change here at home yet either.

[wvdaisy]

Hey Curtis, I've used those pumps before...on kerosene :~)
Great idea! I'm going to buy one Monday. What kind of hose did you attach to it?
Glad I use bottled water for water changes, of course that wouldn't feasably work on the larger tanks most of you have.
Lana

[Curtis1]

1/2" ID clear flexible. Works great !!!!

[firefish2020]

Great idea Curt a few aquaria installers use the same setup, it's a bit of an inside secret LOL, but you would do the world a great favor if you package this to hobbyist in my opinion anyway. By the way I know a profesional published artist who can design your box art :)

Take care,
Ron

[Curtis1]

Thanks, but that's what my wife does, advertising, we have a spare Mac version 4 in the other bedroom just for graphics. She also does desktop publishing from time to time. Recently she's been doing the adds for the Kingsdaughter's Credit Union. She also does website design.

[firefish2020]

Sounds like a plan, good luck.

[odoprelude]

hey, I'll buy one! How much?

[H.crispa]

Guys and gals-- For cryin' out loud I was trying to pass on a critical piece of info that your local H2O supply may be suspect and to call and ask and be careful bla bla bla! Not to generate some off the wall conversation about nothing. Ron seems to be the only one who paid attention to what I said in my post. Look gang, UFO aliens may be invading some of your tanks and lord knows that the government is out to steal your brain using the X chip in your TV and all but all this is secondary to what I was saying.
All I want is to make people aware of is that there is possibly some creeping crud and some anti-creeping crud in your water supply so be careful. That is all. If you are the victim of an alien abduction or chemical spill in your back yard that makes you impervious to cryptonite then that is fine but please, let's not turn this thread into a huge problem. Bottom line-- be aware that your local water supply may be suspect and there are things you can do to head off disaster. That is all. I love you guys and all but lets not turn this into something it is not.

[mcox33]

I've been in contact with the water company they swear they haven't put anything in the water. They even came out and tested and took a sample back to the lab should get the results back on
wed. I'll let you know but let's just say I for one don't believe them when they say they didn't put anything in the water. He also said anything they put in goes in as the water enters the plant and is gone by the time it leaves the plant, that there is no way we get it in our homes.

[hmott]

I work for an analytical laboratory doing proficiency testing for environmental waste and drinking water laboratories. The EPA is very strict on what can and can't be put in the water both drinking (to you) and waste (down the sewer) and what must be tested. I'd be pretty shocked if something in the water that’s "funking things up" came from the water plant.

The other plants that don't have the same strict reg's would be more likely doing it. We work for metal finishing companies to set guidelines for the companies so they know when its cost effective to just get the $50,000 fine and dump extra and when its not. The truth is, it’s easier to pay a $50,000 fine if you get caught for going over the discharge permit than shutting down the plant at $1,000,000 a day to let the pollutant run back down to below permit levels.

[LowCel]

If you are really worried about your water quality the best thing to do is buy an ro/di unit. You can get them on ebay for around $100. It will filter out all of the nasty stuff before it ever has a chance to get into the tank.

That's really the only safe way, you never know what can get into the water system.

My water is some of the best I have seen, it tests at 77 ppm dissolved particles. I would never use that in a reef tank. After I use my ro/di it is testing at 4 ppm which indicates I need new filters for it, it is supposed to test at 0 ppm. I tested the water at JoMars the other day and it tests close to 200 ppm.

[firefish2020]

I dont think it's polutant at all, rather it may be something designed for the purpose of an anti-bacterial agent. All 100% guesses mind you but it is posible that something is or rather was going on. The update here is that I have heard nothing for two weeks now to support the claim. If there is something in there I dont think it's anything that the EPA would be concerned about at all as it may not have any effects on humans.

[firefish2020]

I had another posible report of the something strange yesterday. It fit the MO perfect.

[LowCel]

*cough* RO/DI *cough* It cures what ails ya. ;)

[firefish2020]

yeh most people who have FW wont invest in a RO unit though.

[LowCel]

Good point. :) However there is no reason for a reefer not to have one, with as much money as all of us have invested in our systems the price of a ro/di unit is really just a drop in the bucket. We work our arses off removing all of the nasties from our water, why would anyone want to reintroduce nasties every time they do a water change?


note: I looked it up, nasties is the technical term. ;)