rainwater
- Thread starter duneenworywifit
- Start date
Lupin
Registered Member
- Sep 21, 2006
- 21,430
- 13
- 0
- Real Name
- Paul
I concur. I don't often suggest rainwater even in freshwater setups but if you really have to, make sure you live in an area you know that is free from pollutants. If you live in industrial areas, rainwater is definitely not an option here.
no industrial areas here,I collect rainwater for my discus because its soft,water that we collect from our roofs is hard due to the lime we paint on roofs aswell in storage tank.is it better to use water with high ph or low??
You want as pure water as you can get... and since a higher PH indicates that there's more minerals dissolved in the water, that would mean its not as pure water with a lower PH. But an acid PH would also mean it's came into contact with acids... a neutral PH (7) is ideal and what pure water will have. Your salt mix will bring the water up to the ideal PH for a marine environment, and if there is any acids or bases in the source water your using, then your pram's will be off.
I'm not sure I would trust rain water, and definitely wouldn't trust the rain water around here. I know I also wouldn't use rain water from your roof, with birds and such...
I'd also advise against rainwater. Despite there being no industrial areas in your immediate area, there are many pollutants that can be transported hundreds and even thousands of miles in the atmosphere before falling to ground when it rains.
An extreme example that is easy enough to visualize would be whenever a volcano has a serious eruption and the distance traveled by the volcanic dust / ash. Think of the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980. Volcanic ash traveled from Washington state all the way into the Midwestern US. And, that's simply the distance traveled by particulate ash that settled out on its own in many places without the aid of any rainfall. The distance that a water soluble chemical could travel before falling with the rain could be significantly further, depending on the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, atmospheric wind speeds, and the amount / frequency of rainfall.
Or, think of it in terms of how people with moderate to severe allergies might. Rainfall "cleans" a lot of dust and other allergens out of the air. Any collected rainwater is likely to contain any number of various dust types, depending on the dust sources impacting the area where you live. The compounds that make up that dust could be problematic for a tank. Even if there's only dissolved organic matter in the rainwater (from local trees, other plants, and birds), it could be a sizeable source of ammonia as it breaks down... ammonia that you wouldn't want to put into your tank.
Ultimately, there's just too many variables to trust unfiltered, unprocessed rainwater for a saltwater tank. If there's any plans to keep inverts or corals, there's even less room for error, making the use of unfiltered, unprocessed rain water any even riskier gamble.
An extreme example that is easy enough to visualize would be whenever a volcano has a serious eruption and the distance traveled by the volcanic dust / ash. Think of the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980. Volcanic ash traveled from Washington state all the way into the Midwestern US. And, that's simply the distance traveled by particulate ash that settled out on its own in many places without the aid of any rainfall. The distance that a water soluble chemical could travel before falling with the rain could be significantly further, depending on the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, atmospheric wind speeds, and the amount / frequency of rainfall.
Or, think of it in terms of how people with moderate to severe allergies might. Rainfall "cleans" a lot of dust and other allergens out of the air. Any collected rainwater is likely to contain any number of various dust types, depending on the dust sources impacting the area where you live. The compounds that make up that dust could be problematic for a tank. Even if there's only dissolved organic matter in the rainwater (from local trees, other plants, and birds), it could be a sizeable source of ammonia as it breaks down... ammonia that you wouldn't want to put into your tank.
Ultimately, there's just too many variables to trust unfiltered, unprocessed rainwater for a saltwater tank. If there's any plans to keep inverts or corals, there's even less room for error, making the use of unfiltered, unprocessed rain water any even riskier gamble.