# chloramine VS algae



## thedarkfinder (Feb 29, 2008)

No, alot of place including where I live contain chloramine. 

If I where to guess, I would say that reason that you do not have algea is that you do not excessive nutrients in the water, really clean tap water. The plants that you are growing are sucking down any extra and the algae can not compete with the plants. 
Doing a 70% wc means that any extra nutrients are removed. I use to use RO water to top off my tank. Since i had a large planted tank and adding only ro the tank could take direct sun for hours and had no algae problems.

If you knock the the system out of balance like adding 4 fish or do a massive cut back you could start to get major algae problems. 

A lot of algae is caused by excessive nutrient, namely phosphates, then nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia. If you keep the all of those at small levels you will not get algae, if you create a excess of one or more then you will get algae.


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## eyebeatbadgers (Aug 6, 2007)

thedarkfinder said:


> No, alot of place including where I live contain chloramine.
> 
> If I where to guess, I would say that reason that you do not have algea is that you do not excessive nutrients in the water, really clean tap water. The plants that you are growing are sucking down any extra and the algae can not compete with the plants.
> Doing a 70% wc means that any extra nutrients are removed. I use to use RO water to top off my tank. Since i had a large planted tank and adding only ro the tank could take direct sun for hours and had no algae problems.
> ...


That's not going to be a popular viewpoint around here. 

Tell Tom Barr that having excessive nitrates causes algae. He's only been studying this for a couple decades. What does he know?

Tap water can never be "clean enough" to not sustain algae. I had algae grow in a bottle of tap water that I left in my car for a couple weeks.

As to the OP's question, I have no idea, but Mr. Tom Barr or other vets that frequent the sight may have some insight.


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## thedarkfinder (Feb 29, 2008)

eyebeatbadgers said:


> That's not going to be a popular viewpoint around here.
> 
> Tell Tom Barr that having excessive nitrates causes algae. He's only been studying this for a couple decades. What does he know?
> 
> ...


I have no idea who tom barr is but if he disagrees with that I am sorry. If you take RO water and set it in the sun (with a few drops of tap to seed it), nothing is going to happen, nothing. If you take ro and put ferts in to it and then a few drops of tap, guess what algae. Now if he can not understand that then I think he should attend any high school environmental ecology course, in which they do the above experiment to prove that a excess fertz running off crops causes algae in run off. As for the above. I did not say that tap water was soo clean that it could not grow algae at all. I said that the tank that was fully planted and fully setup tank will suck up the nutrients quicker then the algae, and that may be why the op is not getting massive algae. Now about what is and is not popular around; If the popular thing is just posting to say I need to shut up before I upset a possible troll, then maybe this is not a site that I wish to be at.


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## Blue Ridge Reef (Feb 10, 2008)

eyebeatbadgers said:


> Tell Tom Barr that having excessive nitrates causes algae. He's only been studying this for a couple decades. What does he know?


C'mon, you can make your point without being condescending. :icon_roll


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## EdTheEdge (Jan 25, 2007)

Well I'd like to chime in here. I've had a 2 gallon goldfish bowl with some Vals and snails in it for over 15 years. During most of that time it got only an hour or two of sunlight a day. It never had a hint of algae it didn't matter if I used direct tap or if I treated for chloramine. I'm convinced that it is a nutrient thing and not a chlorimine thing.. I hardly ever add fish food and NEVER added any other nutrients to the water. Those Vals are left to fend for themselves and they do quite nicely. I theorize that they use up all the nutrients so that no algae can survive. In this environment they grow stunted/small. They look normal just small 4 to 5 inches. If I transfer them to my other tanks they quickly grow to 20+ inches. This bowl only gets "top off" water and maybe once a year I do a 100% water change and flush out the substrate.

Over the years in many ways this has always been my most sucessful planted tank.


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## eyebeatbadgers (Aug 6, 2007)

Blue Ridge Reef said:


> C'mon, you can make your point without being condescending. :icon_roll


Giving a proven incorrect viewpoint to someone who doesn't know any better, and doing it in an as-a-matter-of-fact kind of way annoys me.

darkfinder: Read up at www.barrreport.com about Estimative Index.

To OP: I'd go straight to aforementioned site and ask there. You have posed an interesting question.


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## newshound (May 9, 2005)

I'd guess that after a few days of being blasted with sunlight for 5 hours and very little dosing that ferts in the water would be few and far...and maybe way off balance. That would prob be better for algae.
java fern, some kind of sag and jungle val.
"depends how much chloramine is in the tap, how quickly it breaks down and releases ammonia in the sunlit tank"
chloramine doesn't break down quickly.


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## newshound (May 9, 2005)

ashappar said:


> that depends on how you define 'quickly' - so far you have a very unscientific experiment, too many unquantified contributors. There are published studies out there on the effect of chloramines on plants and animals. I'm pretty sure you wont find any that tell you more or less that 'chloramine is an effective/recommended algaecide in a planted tank'.


you are very right about the vague definition of "quickly". I needed more time...sorry aobut that. 
From what I understand chloramine doesn't breakdown nearly as quickly as chlorine. That is why cities have switched over to chloramine. Ppl used to just leave tubs of water out for a couple of days from the tap and used a form of agitation to get rid of the chlorine. That doesn't work for chloramine. It takes alot longer.

"One problem water treatment plants have with chlorine is that it's unstable, and easily dissipated from the water. This means that the treatment plants need to put in higher levels of chlorine, so that they can be sure that some will remain in the water when it reaches your home. Recently, water systems have started treating tap water with chloramine instead of chlorine. Chloramine is a combination of chlorine and ammonia. It's much more stable than chlorine. It won't dissipate from the water as easily, and it isn't as likely to combine with other chemicals. But, chloramine isn't as good at killing off the microorganisms in the water as chlorine, so higher levels of chloramine are often used." from Chucks Planted Aquarium page.

Just throwing ideas out...exploring so to speak.
I have set up another tank...it will not have as much sunlight (can't put a 55 gallon on my window ledge LOL). 
Same as the other tank but it has DIY Co2 (2x), a heater and no fish. The java fern is pearling like crazy. Of course no algae yet...its been less than a week.

The chloramine vs algae was just a idea I was throwing out to ya'll. I was always under the impression that if the nutrients in the water were off the algae would giver.
And although I don't test the water a week of 5 hours of sunlight per day plus at least 6 hours of bright light I'd imagine that all nutrients would be used up...or out of wack.
Yes the chloramine would be spent in a week but given a 70% WC the chloramine would be back full strength (so to speak ;-).
thanks


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## newshound (May 9, 2005)

OMG!
I'm at work but a quick search found this...
"Chloramine-T algicide, when added to a constant temperature bath or recirculating chiller, prevents the growth of algae which can be damaging to equipment and instrumentation. This can be used as a shock treatment, or as a preventative treatment at a dosage of 1 gram per gallon. Comes in a 250 gram bottle."
from this source
http://www.thermo.com/com/cda/product/detail/0,1055,12992,00.html
the question is does chloramine hurt algae more than some aquarium plants?
more--
" Nitrification is probably the major problem facing operators of chloraminated systems. The numbers of nitrifying bacteria decreased as total chlorine residuals increased. However, they were still detected in 21% of samples that contained in excess of 5 mg/L combined chlorine.



- Numbers of nitrifying bacteria increased markedly during periods of accelerated chloramine decay, however, in individual cases it was not clear whether this was a cause or effect of the accelerated decay. Increased levels of oxidised nitrogen, particularly nitrite, could be used as an indicator of bacterial nitrification.



- Laboratory experiments indicate that chloramines are as effective as free chlorine for the removal of plate count organisms and heterotrophic iron precipitating bacteria associated with biofilms.



- Field examinations confirmed that chloramines reduce the amount of biofilm material.



- Five algal species tested in biocidal efficiency experiments were more resistant to chloramine than chlorine. The algal species were more resistant to the disinfectants tested than the common microbial indicator, E.coli, and the protozoan, N.fowleri.



- Chlorophyll autofluorescence cannot be used as a reliable direct indicator of the viability of algal cells exposed to chlorine and chloramines.



- It seems unlikely that the use of chloraminated water for irrigation of soil-grown plants would have adverse effects on growth whether the water is applied directly to the soil or as an aerial spray.



- Concentrations of monochloramine normally found in chloraminated water are high enough to cause problems in hydroponic systems, particularly those that employ low volumes of water which are frequently replenished."
from...
http://www.fwr.org/wsaa/wsaa15.htm


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## newshound (May 9, 2005)

more-
I work at a drinking water treatment facility, built with skylights above the filters back in the 1930s.
Up until a few years ago we used chloramine as a disinfectant throughout the proccess and never had an algal problem. We now pretreat with ozone, requiring choramine be restricted to the end of the proccess. This has turned our filters biological. Aldehydes are a byproduct of that ozone treatment, which are nutrients fueling algal growth in the filters, and can create taste and odor problems.
Here is a pic of one of our filters, each filter normally proccesses approx 30,000 gallons per day.
(IMG:http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i97/dstuer/02-08-07_1419.jpg)
In order to control algal growth we have installed blue hardware store tarps over the skylights. This has slowed alge growth significantly, without having to completely darken the area."


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## thedarkfinder (Feb 29, 2008)

eyebeatbadgers said:


> Giving a proven incorrect viewpoint to someone who doesn't know any better, and doing it in an as-a-matter-of-fact kind of way annoys me.
> 
> darkfinder: Read up at www.barrreport.com about Estimative Index.
> 
> To OP: I'd go straight to aforementioned site and ask there. You have posed an interesting question.


nice website good information. But have a question. Right now I have planted tank, that runs really weak on the ammonium, nitrites, nitrates, iron. But I still get alot of algae if I do a water change. Why. If this is soo correct why? I will tell you why coming out of the tap is about 100 ppm phosphates. I add that to my tank in any amount and I get hair algae. Now I dont doubt that his process works in a general sense. IE for green water. The problem with is math is that if the PO4 (phosphate), K+, potassium, and NO3 do not cause algae blooms and only NH4 and urea. If that was true then a completely setup filter would stop algae. I have had planted tanks from back in the day, when they where called dutch and only the dutch knew how to do it. And i know that if you upset a balanced tank you can get algae. it is always caused by the fact that you have alot of one thing and not enough in others. For example. Alot of light. Not enough nitrates can cause a algae bloom but cause other chemicals can not be used by plants. It i really hard for the plant to use phosphates if you are starving them with minimium nitrates. As for me calling tom barr a toll, I am sorry, I did not know how you where and only responded to the poster.


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