Storm barrel for water?

[Stryker]

Hi there,

I've not found any reference to this suprisingly. However while I was moaning about the rubbishy quality of the water here where I live, a non fish keeper suggested using a storm barrel for collecting rain water to use with my fish.

Question, is that a good idea? or is the water likley to be worse than tap water? the only thing I can think of is what are the pollution levels like in UK rain water?

Thoughts on this anyone?

 

[x-router]

I read about this a while ago.

Rain water in theory is much cleaner than tap water, certainly it won't contain any clorine etc and aparently fish love it if you top you tank up with it every now and then.

So I set out to capture some. I have two plastic containsers I use to pre heat, treat etc water before I put it in my tank and I put one of those outside my house in rain storm. It was a nice clean container and I placed it near the house to catch some of the big drips too.

The resulting water was full of small leaves twigs etc and was very dirty, I didn't even bother to test it.

Perhaps others have had more luck? I suspect light rain with no wind may secure slightly better water?

 

[ade]

Some thoughts....

Depending on where you live, storm water will vary in quality, eg. in Scottish Highlands, the storm water is probably pretty damn good, however if it has to fall through the levels of pollution that blight the rest of the country (industrial, engine fumes etc etc etc), then it's probably pretty damn nasty.

My main thinking is...

Tap water : contains low levels of known nasties (to fish), which we can then treat to remove
Storm water : contains unknown levels of unknown nasties (to fish and possibly humans), which we can't then treat as we don't know what they are.

See my point? Better (betta?) the devil you know...

Just my thoughts...after all, my pond fish don't seem to be suffering too much with their rainwater!

 

[SirMinion]

Cover the bucket/barrel/whatever in butter-muslin, this will let the water through but keep the twig, leaves & dust out.

Only collect rain direct from the sky, don't collect it off the roof or trees as the water will pick up as sorts of nasties as it flows over the bird poop and traffic pollution on the tiles and leaves.

Rain collected during a thunderstorm will be slightly higher in nitrates/nitrites than usual.

 

[ade]

Rain collected during a thunderstorm will be slightly higher in nitrates/nitrites than usual.

Out of interest, do you know why?

 

[x-router]

Cover the bucket/barrel/whatever in butter-muslin, this will let the water through but keep the twig, leaves & dust out.

Good idea I'll try that.

Also the water will be very SOFT. Which was another of the reasons I wanted to try it as my tap water is KH is 14-15 & GH 19-10. Think I will pay a visit to B&Q and build me a permenant water collection device.

 

[SirMinion]

Rain collected during a thunderstorm will be slightly higher in nitrates/nitrites than usual.

Out of interest, do you know why?

The electrical charge in the air during a thunderstorm forces atmospheric nitrogen (air is made up of 80% nitrogen) to chemically bond with water molecules forming nitrates (or is it nitrites?) which then dissolve in the rain.

 

[ade]

SirMinion, thanks for that, pretty much what I'd guessed at.

 

[Stryker]

Thanks for the thoughts peeps. Yep I'm in the midlands, which has to have the worst state of atmosphere in the UK second only to London. Think I'll give it a pass

 

[Adrinal]

 

[ade]

I was given to understand that certain additives are needed to put stuff back into RO water for run of the mill tropical fish? ie RO by itself is only suitable for marine and discus I thought?

 

[Opcn]

Smog will also turn into nitrite (seeing as how that is what it is) in your water I would sugest streaching a tarpolene out during a rain storm to asist in colecting water. The PH of rain water is about 5 (masive CO2 injection from the sky) but it can be as low as 2 if you are in industrial areas. You can bring up the hardness of water with many things and RO water is very useful.

Opcn

 

[Loopyness]

i think im going to try topping up my tank with some rainwater, shouldnt be too bad, i live on a hill, and luckly it looks like its going to rain!!

 

[Lateral Line]

I posted a relevent comment in another thread earlier today...

>>>
RO units are expensive to run, extremely so if you are on a metered water supply as the bypass ratio of good water to bad is very unfavourable.

In the past, I used to collect rainwater, but you need to be careful. If the weather that is producing the rain has come from a direction where there is open sea or simple farmland, it is great stuff, but if it has come from, or you live in an industrial area, it contains substantial nitric/nitrous and sulphurous disolved components - acid rain basically. The pH can be extremely low.

Good rain water is almost completely unbuffered, thus is highly unstable, and should be treated with stabilisers in much the same way as RO water.
<<<

 

[Samage]

In a dire emergency 2 months or so ago, I did a 100% water change on my ACF's tank using nothing but rain water.



He was fine !


(the dire emergency was that I spilt some solvent-based ink into his tank - had to get him out fast! Only when I got him out and cleaned the tank did I realise I had nothing except rainwater to refill the tank with....)