Chrdymcdenis
Member
You guys have been very helpful with my first few grows and I appreciate you all so I figured its time for me to contribute on here instead of just asking questions. But bear with me this is a long one.
Lately I have been doing as much research as I can on AACT. During my trip down the rabbit hole I was able to answer the vast majority of my questions and got enough knowledge to do experiments of my own but there was one thing that always had me coming back. And that was chloramine in my water. I have not gone out of my way enough to get a microscope to check the effectiveness of my teas by checking the presence of microbes (though I'm thinking about it) so I can never really be sure if I'm just bubbling dead bacteria or not. Thus began my research into chloramine. There are pretty much no studies of this in application to growing. But I was able to find and article that sited certain growers who said they notice a difference when using chloraminated water like stunded growth, deficiencies, and overall poor health. Which to me sounds like the symptoms of dead soil. I know for sure my city uses chloramine to treat the tap water, so I had to figure out how to get it out of there so as to not kill all my little guys I'm trying to brew.
I already had a 5 stage RO system, and while they can remove some chloramine, the properties of it make it very difficult to remove with traditional filters (forgot to mention chloramine doesn't evaporate like chlorine does). So this is where the fun science begins. I found several articles about chloramine decay in the presence of organic material in water. With natural organic material (NOM) present around a concentration of 3ppm, chloramine begins to work to break down NOM, as is its purpose as a disinfectant. And as it reacts with natural nitrogen and carbon it turns into organic chloramines and other disinfectant byproducts(THM's). The resulting organic chloramines and byproducts, like chlorine, can be completely evaporated from water and the ones that don't are now ineffective as a disinfectant. To make this overly complicated post a little more simplified, by applying organic material to your water (molasses) and then aerating for 2-24 hours, in theory, should remove most of, if not all chloramine from your water, making it a perfect breeding ground for your little guys.
If you made it this far thanks for reading. I hope this information can help some of you as I spent a lot of time worrying about it myself. Sorry this one was so long, if anyone has any questions I can site all articles and sources but I'm leaving it out for length reasons.
Lately I have been doing as much research as I can on AACT. During my trip down the rabbit hole I was able to answer the vast majority of my questions and got enough knowledge to do experiments of my own but there was one thing that always had me coming back. And that was chloramine in my water. I have not gone out of my way enough to get a microscope to check the effectiveness of my teas by checking the presence of microbes (though I'm thinking about it) so I can never really be sure if I'm just bubbling dead bacteria or not. Thus began my research into chloramine. There are pretty much no studies of this in application to growing. But I was able to find and article that sited certain growers who said they notice a difference when using chloraminated water like stunded growth, deficiencies, and overall poor health. Which to me sounds like the symptoms of dead soil. I know for sure my city uses chloramine to treat the tap water, so I had to figure out how to get it out of there so as to not kill all my little guys I'm trying to brew.
I already had a 5 stage RO system, and while they can remove some chloramine, the properties of it make it very difficult to remove with traditional filters (forgot to mention chloramine doesn't evaporate like chlorine does). So this is where the fun science begins. I found several articles about chloramine decay in the presence of organic material in water. With natural organic material (NOM) present around a concentration of 3ppm, chloramine begins to work to break down NOM, as is its purpose as a disinfectant. And as it reacts with natural nitrogen and carbon it turns into organic chloramines and other disinfectant byproducts(THM's). The resulting organic chloramines and byproducts, like chlorine, can be completely evaporated from water and the ones that don't are now ineffective as a disinfectant. To make this overly complicated post a little more simplified, by applying organic material to your water (molasses) and then aerating for 2-24 hours, in theory, should remove most of, if not all chloramine from your water, making it a perfect breeding ground for your little guys.
If you made it this far thanks for reading. I hope this information can help some of you as I spent a lot of time worrying about it myself. Sorry this one was so long, if anyone has any questions I can site all articles and sources but I'm leaving it out for length reasons.
