bubbling tap water

how long do i need to bubble tap water to get rid of the chlorine? also does bubbling get rid of 100% ?

i always bubble my water 24 hrs just to be safe ..... Dont want the microbes to die

The oxygen helps the cl2 oxidize out but a cheap cl2 strip from the pool section at wal mart will measure your residual, telling you for sure.

make sure your town doesnt use chloramine instead of chlorine. a lot of places do and bubbling doesnt remove any, you have to RO it or buy water to keep the microbes alive. which sucks. BTW chlorine is a gas and they add ammonia to it to make it the liquid chloramine. yummy. no wonder my water smells like a pool sometimes..

is plain bottled water sweet?

Bottled water has ZERO microbes.. but doesnt have any choline soo it good water to use as a starting point

So what water to use after the starting point

And should i bubble bottled water

bottled water doesnt need to be bubbled for chlorine, but you should bubble it with some worm castings mollasses and kelp and you will have pur clean water filled with millions of benificial bacteria. usually you have to add a little citric acid to bring the ph down though..

i cant really get worm castings and dont know what mollases is

odbsmydog said:

make sure your town doesnt use chloramine instead of chlorine. a lot of places do and bubbling doesnt remove any, you have to RO it or buy water to keep the microbes alive. which sucks. BTW chlorine is a gas and they add ammonia to it to make it the liquid chloramine. yummy. no wonder my water smells like a pool sometimes..

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Good info on the chloramine thing...I know my town did a temporary switch from chlorine to chloramine to clean out their system or something. It was supposed to only last for 6 months, but who knows around here.

HERBAL ADDICT said:

i cant really get worm castings and dont know what mollases is

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Mollasses is what they take out of sugar to leave the refined white stuff people put in their coffee, it has lots of trace elements, potassium and carbohydrates that soil microbes like to feed on, GOOGLE is your friend here.
1 hour of sunshine is sufficient to remove chlorine from tap water, not sure if bubbling (aerating) removes it tho, some people say it does.

Hey, what I do is put some tap water into a pitcher, add a couple drops of chloramine/ chlorine/ ammonia eliminator...ya know, the stuff you add to your aquarium, then I just aerate it for 1-2 hours then run a test and there is only a minuscule amount of toxins, not enough to contaminate the soil.

This method works very well for me.

what are those drops made out of?

odbsmydog said:

make sure your town doesnt use chloramine instead of chlorine. a lot of places do and bubbling doesnt remove any, you have to RO it or buy water to keep the microbes alive. which sucks. BTW chlorine is a gas and they add ammonia to it to make it the liquid chloramine. yummy. no wonder my water smells like a pool sometimes..

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even if they don't put chloramine in your tap water, free floating ammonia in the water can bind to chlorine making chloramine; which, as you said, bubbling doesn't remove any of. Why mess with bubbling? Get the cheapest brand de-chlorinator from the aquarium section. It removes chlorine AND chloramine.

RawFishTankTopHat said:

even if they don't put chloramine in your tap water, free floating ammonia in the water can bind to chlorine making chloramine; which, as you said, bubbling doesn't remove any of. Why mess with bubbling? Get the cheapest brand de-chlorinator from the aquarium section. It removes chlorine AND chloramine.

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I've never heard of them, (de-chlorinators) but it certainly sounds good and I'll check it out.
There is a product called "Seachem Prime" that removes Chlorine, Chloramine and Ammonia.

Seachem Prime™ is the complete and concentrated conditioner for both fresh and salt water. Prime™ removes chlorine, chloramine, ammonia and detoxify heavy metals (5ml per 200L)

spiked1 said:

I've never heard of them, (de-chlorinators) but it certainly sounds good and I'll check it out.
There is a product called "Seachem Prime" that removes Chlorine, Chloramine and Ammonia.

Seachem Prime™ is the complete and concentrated conditioner for both fresh and salt water. Prime™ removes chlorine, chloramine, ammonia and detoxify heavy metals (5ml per 200L)

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Then you have heard of de-chlorinators, if you've heard of prime.
We've been keeping planted freshwater fish tanks for 5 years or so. I wouldn't go with prime (its probably the most expensive one!!!) also, most don't remove ammonia, that is an extra (bell&whistle) that seachem throws in.
Just get a basic de-chlorinator at the fish section at wal-mart. Fish can die from chlorine/chloramine poisoning, so anywhere that sells pet fish will sell de-chlorinator. "Jungle" and "tetra" are the brands you'll see the most and cost around 5-6 bucks for their biggest bottle. Most of them have a couple other additives: one is a chelating agent to bind with heavy metals in the tap water (to make it less toxic for fish) the other additive stimulates the fishes slime coat (something many of us in the fish hobby don't agree with)
Sometimes you can find generic de-chlorinators that only remove chlorine and chloramine, without the other additives, and here's the best part: they're usually the generic ones, and much cheaper!
The point of all that background is that I don't know if the chelators make the metals unavailable to plants because I don't really understand chelation well, and that I don't know if the other additive can cause issues or not.