City Water Quality Report

[HWDylan]

Hey I was wondering if anyone here is adept at making sense of a city water quality report?

I am trying to track down an issue my tank has been having where corals just die within about 2-3 weeks (sometimes faster). I have been trying to solve this issue for the better part of a year and am still stuck. I have tried all the usual things (lighting, flow, cal/alk, etc) and it is all detailed here:

Asking for help because I am at a complete loss

I am at a complete loss here and I don't know what else to try. I would appreciate any and all advice or ideas you guys possibly have. I am a year and a few months into this new tank. Everything is going great and (using a trident) I have the parameters very very stable, coraline algae growing...

www.reef2reef.com

I am really leaning towards some chemical irritant in the water supply that is slipping through my RODI filtration somehow. This is a last resort since I really feel like I have explored almost every other option.

Here is my city's 2019 water report (see attached)

Anyone here see anything out of the ordinary that maybe would cause issues in a reef even after RODI filtration?

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

What kind of corals are dying? SPS? Are you using a RODI? if so what kind and how many stages? Have you measured TDS? I have very bad city water quality as well and High TDS and a few years ago had my city water change or do something and got through my 4 stage rodi at the time and I lost about $5k worth of sps from that event. So I always recommend a 7 Stage.

 

[Terry Mattson]

Test your rodi filtered water for copper. Make sure it is 0. TDs should be 0 also. I use a 5 stage. My water tds going into the rodi is 273 to 290. Zero coming out.

 

[Miller535]

Unless you are having a problem with your RODI, I highly doubt that is your issue. If I were you I would get an ICP test done. Countless countless people (myself included) have had tank problems we could not figure out until we did an ICP test.

 

[HWDylan]

What kind of corals are dying? SPS? Are you using a RODI? if so what kind and how many stages? Have you measured TDS? I have very bad city water quality as well and High TDS and a few years ago had my city water change or do something and got through my 4 stage rodi at the time and I lost about $5k worth of sps from that event. So I always recommend a 7 Stage.

I have the 7 stage unit. It has been basically everything from Zoas to SPS. Zoas seems to hang on but they never grow and some just whither away.

Test your rodi filtered water for copper. Make sure it is 0. TDs should be 0 also. I use a 5 stage. My water tds going into the rodi is 273 to 290. Zero coming out.

My water is in the 300s going in but with the 7 stage filter the water is always 0 coming out.

Unless you are having a problem with your RODI, I highly doubt that is your issue. If I were you I would get an ICP test done. Countless countless people (myself included) have had tank problems we could not figure out until we did an ICP test.

I have done 3 ICP tests over the course of the last year and every single one has come back perfect. I have attached the most recent one on this post.

 

[flabryth]

I would do good test of my water after it has mixed and brought up to room temp before I put it in. I would then take measurements of my tank. If source water is the issue it will show higher than normal numbers like alk, copper and such. What you are looking for is that these elevated numbers are building in you system and creating the underlining issues you are fighting. You should probably do this multiple times throughout the year so you have an idea of what you putting into you system.

Water reports really help you know how to setup your RODI system...so long as they do not switch to chloramines not much is going to change drastically unless something fails in the area or the filtration plant but, you will get a warning about that.

 

[Dkeller_nc]

From the standpoint of your specific city's water report, the item that would concern me is the copper concentration. Your RODI system should effectively remove copper in your water down to basically zero. However, copper in the city's water test samples suggests that they've a corrosion problem. As you might be aware, the city of Flint's issues were that they failed to put a corrosion inhibitor in the treated water when they switched from Lake Huron to the Flint River. That in and of itself wouldn't have been a problem. The issue was then that almost all of the residential connections to the city's water mains were lead pipe. Again, in and of itself not an issue.

However, the combination of corrosive tap water and lead pipe resulted in the passivation layer on the inside of the pipes dissolving, and voila - high concentrations of lead in the drinking water in homes, but the tests of the source water from the Flint River didn't reveal any issues.

I'd be cautious about attributing any issues in your reef to the tap water, since most of the time folks discover that their specific gravity measurements were wildly off because of a malfunctioning meter, they had a galvanized part that had corroded into their sump, they had a hairline crack in their heater case, etc...

However, if you're sure that you've nailed everything else down, you could get an ICP assay of your tap water, preferably by taking the RODI system off of whatever connection it has to your plumbing, and take the sample directly from there.

 

[HWDylan]

From the standpoint of your specific city's water report, the item that would concern me is the copper concentration. Your RODI system should effectively remove copper in your water down to basically zero. However, copper in the city's water test samples suggests that they've a corrosion problem. As you might be aware, the city of Flint's issues were that they failed to put a corrosion inhibitor in the treated water when they switched from Lake Huron to the Flint River. That in and of itself wouldn't have been a problem. The issue was then that almost all of the residential connections to the city's water mains were lead pipe. Again, in and of itself not an issue.

However, the combination of corrosive tap water and lead pipe resulted in the passivation layer on the inside of the pipes dissolving, and voila - high concentrations of lead in the drinking water in homes, but the tests of the source water from the Flint River didn't reveal any issues.

I'd be cautious about attributing any issues in your reef to the tap water, since most of the time folks discover that their specific gravity measurements were wildly off because of a malfunctioning meter, they had a galvanized part that had corroded into their sump, they had a hairline crack in their heater case, etc...

However, if you're sure that you've nailed everything else down, you could get an ICP assay of your tap water, preferably by taking the RODI system off of whatever connection it has to your plumbing, and take the sample directly from there.

Thanks for the thorough reply!

I have done an ICP of my newly mixed water as well as my tank right before a water change and nothing of note has ever manifested. I guess I am just worried about some additive or chemical the water plant is using that wont show up on an ICP test that could irritate/kill corals. I have been keeping corals for 15+ years now and even do it at work professionally and I have never had a tank behave like this. I am over a year and a half since putting water in and nothing but fish and coraline algae stays alive for very long.

 

[Dkeller_nc]

Thanks for the thorough reply!

I have done an ICP of my newly mixed water as well as my tank right before a water change and nothing of note has ever manifested. I guess I am just worried about some additive or chemical the water plant is using that wont show up on an ICP test that could irritate/kill corals. I have been keeping corals for 15+ years now and even do it at work professionally and I have never had a tank behave like this. I am over a year and a half since putting water in and nothing but fish and coraline algae stays alive for very long.

Again, I'd be checking the accuracy of your basic measuring equipment - particularly those that measure temperature and specific gravity. You might've already done this and detailed it in your troubleshooting thread, but unfortunately I can't read through it at the moment (my company makes SARS-CoV2 assays, we're kind of busy. ).

From the standpoint of water purification, there's a few possibilities. One is that there's a concentration of lead, arsenic, mercury and other heavy metals that are in your tap water at low levels - not because it's coming from the treatment plant, but coming through as a result of old plumbing. Your RODI system, if it is well maintained, will catch 100% of that. However, if your changes of DI resin are infrequent, your RO membrane is old, or both, it is possible that a pulse of this could make it through to your purified product. Another, much more likely possibility is that your carbon blocks could be exhausted before you change them, in which case chlorine and ammonia could get through to the purified product. Those two will not be picked up in an ICP test (the chlorine, in particular, will be masked by the chlorides in ASW).

There are easy checks on this - chloramine test strips. You can get these for cheap from Bulk Reef Supply. One note about this sort of testing - sample the output RODI at the end of your production run, since that's the worst case for break-through for chloramine.

Another comment about likelihood - in an established tank, a bit of ammonia in the ASW or evaporation make-up water would be inconsequential if the percentage water change is <10%, as the bacteria in the tank will reduce the ammonia to nitrite and nitrate very, very rapidly.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Thanks for the thorough reply!

I have done an ICP of my newly mixed water as well as my tank right before a water change and nothing of note has ever manifested. I guess I am just worried about some additive or chemical the water plant is using that wont show up on an ICP test that could irritate/kill corals. I have been keeping corals for 15+ years now and even do it at work professionally and I have never had a tank behave like this. I am over a year and a half since putting water in and nothing but fish and coraline algae stays alive for very long.

there is no concern about unknown chemicals In 0 ppm tds ro/di not showing on icp and killing corals.