In Line Water Filters

[jhamil4ton]

Hello Everyone. I have a quick question. Are "in line" water filters effective in removing Chloramines and other heavy metals? In the past I have always used a dechlorinator, but recently purchased an "in line" filter that attaches to my garden hose. I just want to make sure that the koi still receive appropriate minerals from the water and that it only filters the harmful aspects. The dealer told me it was perfectly safe, but I wanted to get expert opinion on it as well.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Terry]

Most of the hose end filters are just filled with carbon. Same as a carbon filter.

[xiaohuang7]

so the direct answer is not much. it depends how much carbon, how often you change it, water flow rate/volume. i wouldn't put too much faith into in, you'd need an aweful lot of activated carbon at trickle rates for it to work well. i may be mistaken, but probably not very many people on this board use a gadget like that. you might want to do a forum search for trickle water changes.

remember the reason activated carbon works is I think the pores absorb material. once they're full... game over. if you don't get enough contact time, well, stuff passes thru -- and i don't think it has AI to pick what good stuff to let thru, and what to capture.

like the smallish amount of carbon, that would fit at the end of a hose, might be effective at trickle rates for 300 gallons. just a wild guess, could be even less.

[jhamil4ton]

Thanks for the response. I should have thought about that before purchasing. That's what I get for making an impulse buy. Thanks again. I appreciate the advice.

[ellen]

Hi,

We have used several different methods for removing chlorine from water. We've had our pond (4,500 gal) for 3 years. We probably do a 5% water change every week (not enough, I know) as a result of cleaning the filter. Occasionally we'll do a bigger one (once a month, maybe 10% ?). In City of Sacramento city limits they don't even meter our water, which I guess makes us doubly crazy to not do bigger changes.

For about the first 6 months of pond ownership we used sodium thiosulfate (ST). Then my husband for a big carbon filter, which I guess was designed for a whole house. We used that for about 2 years, changing the carbon cartridges every X number of gallons as the filter recommended. (For this purpose we got a flow meter that was like an odometer that could tell us total gallons that had flowed through the filter over its life). I could talk to my husband to figure out the brand.

Recently he got some other kind of filter which for some reason was supposed to be better (I think it just had charcoal in it)--it was smaller. only after purchasing it did he see instructions indicating that a slower flow rate resulted inmore being removed from the water. Which meant he would never put the hose on full-blast to fill the pond, so it took a while (hours) to replace the water lost from cleaning the filter. However, after having it for a few months, the flow rate through it gradually slowed to a trickle. And I mean a slow trickle. It now would take days to top off the top couple of inches of the pond. We'd get so impatient we'd just fill it with the hose, no carbon filter, and then add amquel to the pond (the powdered form comes in large buckets), which promises to remove chlorine and chloramines. Then I got some more ST, but then we went back to the old original big carbon filter (size of a car battery) but got a new one.

Now here is where my post should get really interesting and relevant to you (all that was just background!):

I just sent 3 water samples off to a water testing lab just to see what all the levels of various water components were. I collected a sample from the pond, a sample from our hose, and a sample from our hose after going through the filter. I just got the results back. I can't post an excel file on this site, so I will convert it to a .pdf tonight and post the results. It's clear to me that some stuff (Nitrate, P, K, Na, Cl) is accumulating in our pond and more frequent water changes would be in order. Sometimes it just takes hard numbers to motivate you. It's also clear that the filter reduces a lot of stuff, (like sulfur) but doesn't drop it to zero. Unfortunately the lab does not test for chlorine (or flouride). But my husband has a good LaMotte clorine test we just got. He determined that 1) there is chlorine (but no chloramine) in our tap/hose water, 2) the level goes to zero after the water goes through a new cartrdige inour filter that's in-line with the hose, and 3) a cartridge near the end of its "life span" still reduces chlorine, but not to zero.

As I said, I can post my water test results tonight, along with the brand of carbon filter we use. I would recommend it. As to why we use that and not ST in general, I can only respond that my husband likes gadgets. I'd love to hear more peoples thoughts on the water test results.

Ellen
Camellia Koi Club
www.camelliakoi.org

[jhamil4ton]

Ellen;

Thanks! I would love to see your water test results. In the meantime, I've been afraid to use the in-line filter and have gone back to the dechlorinator. However, maybe your water tests could change my mind.

Thanks again! I'm also curious as to which filter you are using.

[ellen]

Here are the test results. For the pond I just dipped the test bottle into the pond. For the hose I just turned on the hose, and for the post-filter I just turned on the hose attached to the post filter. My husband and I agree that I should re-test the hose before and after filter by letting the hose run for a minute or two, and same for the carbon filter cartridge, rather than collecting wtaer right off the bat that's probably been sitting in the hose for a few days.

We use baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to make the alkalinity high for both pH buffering purposes (related to the occasional pH swing from algae blooms) and because it's supposed to be good for the ammonia-fixing bacteria. Plus we regularly add calcium chloride and magnesium sulfate (epsom salts) to increase the general hardness to levels recommended by a Koi USA magazine article. So this should explain the levels of calcium, magnesium, sodium, and chlorides (different from chlorine of course) and presumably sulfur (if that test is actually detecting sufates).

I was suprised at the presence of "ammonium" in the pond, which I looked up. It's different from ammonia and not toxic to the fish (
http://www.vcnet.com/koi_net/H2Oquality.html is a great source of info on water quality and where I learned this). Our Lamotte salycilate kit shows no ammonia present in the pond, so it's possible the lab uses a nessler kit which is detecting some bound ammonium--related to when we were using the amquel about a month ago--that the bacteria hasn't got around to breaking down yet

What I didn't realize yesterday is that my husband actually put two filters in the line, I believe to so one backs up the other or something. He sais he did this because of a set-up he saw described on a marine aquarium website. I'll get that website from him to post.

For chlorine, re-read my above post: lab doesn't test for it, but my husband's testing (turns out it's a Hach brand test, not a lamotte) found that the carbon filter when new removed chlorine to a level undetectable by this test. And that is with the hose on max flow. (The website for the cartridge recommends a max flow of 3 gal/min.)

http://www.americanplumber.com/PDF/3...Cartridges.pdf This is the website where he got the stuff from. It's the "radial flow carbon" WRC25HD model. Again, I don't think we're doing this because we're worried about anything in our water other than cholrine, I think it's because he likes gadgets.

We'll be curious to use our nitrate and potassium tests now and see how their results compare to the lab test.

The lab is J R Peters in Allentown, PA and they charge $36 per sample, in case anyone else is interested. (If anyone knows of any better deals, feel free to post them!)