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Rain water

blancmange

Seedling
Joined
18 Jun 2011
Messages
4
Greetings , can anybody please advise me about using rain water for my weekly water changes :?: Have a tropical tank. Is it safe and do I have to add anything to it :?:
 
Hi Tom I live in north staffordshire (in the sticks as they say) the water comes off my shed roof(felt) . Had a look at it tonite and it looks clean enough.Did add anything to your water ??
 
Some folks say to just not collect the first ten minutes of rainfall due to possible contaminants in the air. Sounds reasonable to me!
 
have a look at the .... If its yellow let it mellow .... Thread on here. Should give you some info.
 
Best not to use it from a felt roof but if it's tiled, and especially old tiles, then you will be fine. I used to use it but switched to RO as the water butt was at the far end of the garden and when it snowed, rained or got really cold I didn't do many water changes...

I filtered the water through a carbon pod before use just in case.
 
Hi all,
Daisy chain 2 water butts together and take the water from the second butt, furthest away from the down-pipe. If you want you can carbon filter etc., but I just add some Daphnia to the butts. If your water has swimming Daphnia in it you are good to go.

cheers Darrel
 
dw1305 said:
Hi all,
Daisy chain 2 water butts together and take the water from the second butt, furthest away from the down-pipe. If you want you can carbon filter etc., but I just add some Daphnia to the butts. If your water has swimming Daphnia in it you are good to go.

cheers Darrel

And of course, free fish food!
 
dw1305 said:
Hi all,
Daisy chain 2 water butts together and take the water from the second butt, furthest away from the down-pipe. If you want you can carbon filter etc., but I just add some Daphnia to the butts. If your water has swimming Daphnia in it you are good to go.

cheers Darrel
so the first butt is to allow the contaminants to precipitate out? Allowing the cleaner water to flow into butt 2?
 
Hi all,
so the first butt is to allow the contaminants to precipitate out? Allowing the cleaner water to flow into butt 2?
Yes, I'm not sure about soluble contaminants, but it stops any solid bits getting into the second butt, it also allows you to clean the butts out with-out losing all you water. I started out and I used to filter everything with carbon etc, but for the last 10 years I've used the Daphnia method without any problem.

cheers Darrel
 
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