tinyplants Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 So I had set up my first tank with RO water, getting everything going, and nothing has been happening with the cycle aside from some weird and anomalous readings at the beginning. I was assuming, perhaps foolishly I realize now, that buying RO water meant the water would be fine. I was also assuming that the reason my cycle was completely not moving, even with half a bottle of stability poured into a 2.5 gal tank, was that my PH is pretty low.For some reason, the other day, it occurred to me to test the remaining RO water in my jug. The jug has been living, sealed, in a dark closet (no more than ten minutes of light per day, when getting things out) and the jug was brand new when I bought the water in the first place. The water registered dGH 3.36, dKH 1.68 with Tetramin's kit. Our tap is dGH 5.6 and dKH 3.36. I'm on the same water system as this LFS as they are two blocks away, on the same street. So my question, at this point is if this likely means that there are chloramines left in my old RO water (which I have now dumped the jug, rinsed and refilled at a further-away LFS who tests their RO water every three days and has maintenance done on their system twice a week and whose water registers at 0 for both GH and KH) that's still in my tank? Have I ruined my tank and have to take everything out and start over? I should have tested the RO water before I set-up. I know that now. I won't ever make this mistake again. I dosed the tank with some Prime just in case. Is this enough? Is there more I should do? I'm a bit upset because I realized the dGH and dKH issue about three days ago but it didn't even occur to me that there could be chloramines in my RO water after that and now I don't even know. (I should note that I do not, in fact, have a chlorine water test here because, using RO water, I thought I was safe. Am now debating if I should dose every jug of RO water with Prime just in case or what I should do.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loumeer Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 Is there anything living in your tank? Plants will be fine. Dose prime it will take care of any chlorine and choramine. If you have nothing linving (fish/shrimp) in the tank no harm no foul. Your tank will start to cycle and within a few weeks the gH and kH will settle. You may have to change the reminerlizer dosage temporaily in order to get you gH and kH to the level you would like them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tinyplants Posted October 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 No, the tank has been going through a fishless cycle and has nothing alive other than plants, which I am so grateful for. I'm so very, very glad that I discovered this now, during cycling rather than them having a problem somewhere in the future when I had livestock. I will never ever put RO water in my closet without testing it first again. I put in a double dose of Prime, I just wasn't sure if this would mean something like that my substrate had been ruined or something since it's been soaking in probably-chloramine-contaminated-water for something like three weeks now. I figure this set back will mean it'll take a month or two before I can consider my tank stable, on top of the month or so I was planning to wait now, just to make sure I figure out water change parameter stability and all.I'm also not sure what I should do about the store I bought the original RO from. I'd go talk to them about it, except recently I went there and they were selling neos with the green scourge so I'm not sure they actually know their stuff and I've found that most of the employees there will ignore me in favour of going to talk to male customers when I try to ask a question. But maybe I should talk to them anyway? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shrimple minded Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 What is a Tetramin's kit? I can't find any reference to "Tetramin"......the google-machine only spits out Tetra products. Just curious because I've never seen a GH/KH test kit that gives accuracy into the hundredths. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chibikaie Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 Tetra may have tests in ppm (their strip tests are definitely ppm), and doing math on the results will give you as many decimals as you want unless you round by significant digits. tinyplants 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shrimple minded Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 Ahhhhhhhh, thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tinyplants Posted October 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 Yeah, exactly. I think it gives me mg/ml or something like that (not at home to check) and then I do math to get the degrees. Since I'm not great at rounding is just easier for me to post to a couple of decimals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gillznglass Posted October 16, 2015 Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 Good RO units use carbon block filters before the water goes to the RO membranes. They do not last nearly as long as the membranes. Each one is usually rated for sour many gallons that it will remove chlorine and the even more difficult cloramines. It is possible the water you received had expired carbon block filters. The only way to know for sure is a chlorine test kit. Prime removes both the variants of these compounds with no issue. So if you don't have a test kit, use prime anyway. It is way less money than shrimp. Glad to hear you are fishless cycling. Fritzyme 7 helps speed that up big time. Just use less than usual dosage of ammonia, or it takes to long for the nitrobacter for the nitrites to catch up to the ammonia munchers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tinyplants Posted October 17, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 I'm keeping my ammonia around 1 rather than 3 currently. I dosed with Prime that I had on hand for my tiny snail vase and I'm going to add more stability over the next few days. I'll give it a week or two with what I have on hand before I try any new additives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chibikaie Posted October 17, 2015 Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 Parts per million (ppm) is also the same as mg/mL. Want to really blow your brain out? Divide mg/mL by 10 and you now have % - percent solution is defined as grams per 100 mL. The Prime will have fixed anything by now and you'll dilute everything out with water changes anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tinyplants Posted October 17, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 That's pretty cool math. Thanks! And also I'm really glad this hasn't screwed everything up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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