Air Conditioner Condensate - Catch To Use In Aquarium?

[smoothvirus]

OK so I'm still doing research on my planned 75G Blue Ram tank.

I've noticed some of the people keeping these fish sucessfully are using distilled water, or RO water, typically they mix it 50/50 with treated tap water. Apparently they get nice soft water from doing this.

Right now I'm planning on getting a big trashcan and using it to age my water for a few days before putting it in the tank. I'll toss some peat moss in a nylon or something and aerate it for a couple of days.

Was also thinking about getting a RO filter and mixing the filtered water 50/50 with tap water. As for distilled water, it costs $1.12 a gallon - forget that option!

But last night I hit on an idea, I live in an old house with no central air, we have to use window units to keep the bedrooms cool in the summer. Typically we only run them at night and turn them off when we're not home. They have little drains that drip the condensate water out the back and into the lawn.

So I think... aha! Condensate water should be more or less the same as distilled water! I put a couple of big buckets in the yard, catch the water, and I'll have free distilled water all summer! Not good enough to drink mind you, but good enough for a fish tank. I'll mix it 50/50 with tap water and age it in the big trashcan.

Did some searches on this idea but I didn't find any discussions here about it. I can see four possible problems though:

1. Metal contamination: I think lots of window A/C units use copper piping internally. Could contaminate the water with dissolved metals. Not sure about this one.

2. Consistency: Can't gaurantee that I'll be able to capture enough water. To make it work I'd have to get 5 or 10 gallons per week. Might not be able to do that unless it's real humid outside (of course by July in Washington DC it'll be VERY humid).

3. Bacteria/Mould: Nasty stuff grows like crazy in evaporation pans. Might start growing in the bucket. I'll have to clean the bucket when it's empty.

4. Legionella: Can't make the fish sick but can make humans very sick. Risk seems to be very low though - window A/C units are too small to grow it - I've checked on that before. Legionella needs really warm water to grow, like around 110F, and the water in the buckets would be around the same as the ambient temprature outside, not hot enough. Even then, I'd probably have to drink the water to get sick, and I don't plan on drinking it.


thoughts?

 

[velcrohead]

OK so I'm still doing research on my planned 75G Blue Ram tank.

I've noticed some of the people keeping these fish sucessfully are using distilled water, or RO water, typically they mix it 50/50 with treated tap water. Apparently they get nice soft water from doing this.

Right now I'm planning on getting a big trashcan and using it to age my water for a few days before putting it in the tank. I'll toss some peat moss in a nylon or something and aerate it for a couple of days.

Was also thinking about getting a RO filter and mixing the filtered water 50/50 with tap water. As for distilled water, it costs $1.12 a gallon - forget that option!

But last night I hit on an idea, I live in an old house with no central air, we have to use window units to keep the bedrooms cool in the summer. Typically we only run them at night and turn them off when we're not home. They have little drains that drip the condensate water out the back and into the lawn.

So I think... aha! Condensate water should be more or less the same as distilled water! I put a couple of big buckets in the yard, catch the water, and I'll have free distilled water all summer! Not good enough to drink mind you, but good enough for a fish tank. I'll mix it 50/50 with tap water and age it in the big trashcan.

Did some searches on this idea but I didn't find any discussions here about it. I can see four possible problems though:

1. Metal contamination: I think lots of window A/C units use copper piping internally. Could contaminate the water with dissolved metals. Not sure about this one.

2. Consistency: Can't gaurantee that I'll be able to capture enough water. To make it work I'd have to get 5 or 10 gallons per week. Might not be able to do that unless it's real humid outside (of course by July in Washington DC it'll be VERY humid).

3. Bacteria/Mould: Nasty stuff grows like crazy in evaporation pans. Might start growing in the bucket. I'll have to clean the bucket when it's empty.

4. Legionella: Can't make the fish sick but can make humans very sick. Risk seems to be very low though - window A/C units are too small to grow it - I've checked on that before. Legionella needs really warm water to grow, like around 110F, and the water in the buckets would be around the same as the ambient temprature outside, not hot enough. Even then, I'd probably have to drink the water to get sick, and I don't plan on drinking it.


thoughts?

Being a fish person and someone who dabbles with aircom I have seen this question before.
I think the main reason for not using the condensate water is because it drips from the evaporator and can pick up any airborn contaminates.
This is not a proven theory (that I know of) and think people have just been cautious and decided to not use the water.
If I can dig up the posts from the aircon forums I will post the link here, But it was a while ago now that I read it.

 

[smoothvirus]

Well, the Ram tank has been up and running since June. I experimented with this plan for a few weeks this summer.

It didn't work.. here's why

1. Metal contamination: I think lots of window A/C units use copper piping internally. Could contaminate the water with dissolved metals. Not sure about this one.

This proved not to be a serious problem. At least not that I saw but I didn't test the water for dissolved metals.

2. Consistency: Can't gaurantee that I'll be able to capture enough water. To make it work I'd have to get 5 or 10 gallons per week. Might not be able to do that unless it's real humid outside (of course by July in Washington DC it'll be VERY humid).

This WAS a problem. I wasn't able to consistently produce enough water unless the tempratures got into the mid 80's. Anyhting below that, and typically all I'd get would be maybe a quart of water in the bucket at the end of the day, and there would be a bunch of drowned insects in it, making it useless. By July it was very hot in DC and I was able to get 5+ gallons a day - more than I could use. However it really only stayed that hot through July and August, by September it had cooled off and I don't think I could consistently produce enough water now.

3. Bacteria/Mould: Nasty stuff grows like crazy in evaporation pans. Might start growing in the bucket. I'll have to clean the bucket when it's empty.

This problem proved to be the killer. What happened was this, when I first had this idea I tested the condensate water for ammonia and found none. Now that was in late April. I decided ammonia was not a factor and did not test it again, until July when I was getting 5-10 gallons a day of condensate water. What I found shocked me, very high levels of ammonia, reading a level of 3 on my test kit, from every A/C unit I tested! So, what happened? Small insects are attracted to the moisture inside the A/C, they crawl inside and drown inside the unit. In the spring there aren't as many insects around so I didn't find any ammonia. But by July the units had been running for a month straight and a lot of little bugs had crawled in there and died. Their little bodies rotted and created the ammonia.

I discontinued using the water because of the high ammonia levels. Since I was adding 2-3 gallons a day into a fully cycled, heavily planted tank, the ammonia rapidly dissapeared (so fast I didn't detect it), but had I done any major water changes I probably would have ran into big problems.

4. Legionella: Can't make the fish sick but can make humans very sick. Risk seems to be very low though - window A/C units are too small to grow it - I've checked on that before. Legionella needs really warm water to grow, like around 110F, and the water in the buckets would be around the same as the ambient temprature outside, not hot enough. Even then, I'd probably have to drink the water to get sick, and I don't plan on drinking it.

After doing some more research, there have been some documented cases where Legionella made people sick from things like a water fountain in a lake. Certainly the water in the lake wasn't anywhere near 110F. I still can't find any cases of Leigonella in a window A/C unit - so the risk is probably very low. Note that there is one possible case of someone getting Leigonella from an aquarium! The risk is there - it's small, but it's there.


Insects - unforseen but this turned out to be a BIG problem with my experiment. I found dead bugs all the time in my collection buckets. Japanese beetles turned up all the time, floating around in them. I had to ladle them out before collecting the water. The other big insect problem was mosquitoes. We had the wettest June on record this year and by late June/early July the Asian Tiger Mosquitoes were TERRIBLE. I got bit like crazy, just being in my backyard getting the water out of the buckets! I mean, within 20-30 seconds I'd have 6-7 mosquitoes on my legs, biting me! Now, the other problem is that they were probably laying eggs in my buckets. I checked and the gestation period for asian tiger mosquitoes is about a week. Any larvae that hatched would have been in my fish tank by then, and would have made a tasty snack for my tetras. So by emptying the buckets daily, I avoided making a breeding farm for mosquitoes. However, had the neighbors seen the buckets in my yard, they could have got upset about it. That didn't happen but it could have, espeically with the incredible number of mosquitoes we had in July.


Final judgement? It's not worth it. Yes, you can get clean distilled water from an A/C unit, for a couple of weeks in the spring, but you won't be able to get much water because it isn't hot enough. By the summer you'll be getting so many insects in there that you'll need to tear down the whole A/C unit and clean it out weekly, to keep from getting ammonia in your collected water. Way too much work for too little gain.

I bought an R/O unit and I use that now.

 

[xJake]

You can't use AC or dehumidifier condensate simply because indoor air is way too polluted and all that pollution ends up in the water it produces. This can include dust, mold spores, irritants, chemicals, etc. I've talked to all of my local fish store owners and they all say the same thing.