Harvesting Water for Bowls

[jkun17]

I was thinking about creating a 5 gallon for the sole purpose of harvesting de-ammoniated water for my fish bowls. My County puts Chloramine in our water which is fine for me but bad for my fish and bacteria. My conditioner breaks up the Chloramine into Chlorine and Ammonia. The Chlorine is also dealt accordingly with my conditioner, but the Ammonia is still in the water. I've tried using Ammo-lock, but ammonia is still readable when I test so I was considering different ways to get rid of the ammonia. My first thought was to get a 5 gallon, cycle it and install a bio wheel to clean up the water which I would then harvest and use in my bowls. I doubt very many people here have tried this but it's hard for me to find alternatives.

Does anyone have any ideas about this or other ways to get rid of the ammonia?

If anyone here lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, how do you deal with Chloramine?

 

[jkun17]

Just another thought. I do weekly water changes for maintenance of my 10 gallon. If it ammonia and nitrite tests are all negative on the water I pull out, could I recycle that in my bowls?

 

[sylvia]

If the bowls are cycled (which they can be) the ammonia will be removed anyway. What sort of fish bowls are you reffering to? I mean what are they used for? Can they be cycled or is this not a feasable option?
Otherwise, I think what you described is possible. You'll need to treat the bowl as if you had fish and the removal of water is like a partial water change. In other words, I think you should probably always have some fresh (ammonia-rich) water in there so the nitrifying bacteria don't starve and treat the water before putting it in the bowl so the chlorine doesn't kill off the bacteria and allows the ammonia to be used up. Only remove a fraction of the water for the bowls. Also, you will need to consider that this water will contain high nitrates. The only way to remove these would be plants in this case.

 

[jkun17]

These are one-gallon bowls *sigh* 6 one-gallon bowls (I love my bettas, what more can I say. And I'm going to a betta show this coming Saturday so it's possible the number may increase again.)

How would I cycle a bowl?

And if I did do the 5 gallon I know I'd have to add the plants to keep nitrates under control.

 

[sylvia]

I'm not 100% sure about your second question... assuming the only factors are ammonia and nitrites, theoreticaly, this should work. You would, however, still have high nitrates. In your larger tank, you remove these nitrates with regular water changes... don't know what you would do in this case. I suppose plants, again, would be the only option.
Maybe you could combine both methods?
In any case, I'm not sure whether there are other reasons this second idea might not work... If pH and stuff are the same and there is nno floating debris or whatever, I can't think what may not go well

 

[SirMinion]

...another reason not to keep fish in unfiltered bowls.

 

[jkun17]

I'm not 100% sure about your second question... assuming the only factors are ammonia and nitrites, theoreticaly, this should work.

If the bowls are cycled (which they can be) the ammonia will be removed anyway.

The second quote was the one I was wondering about. How do I cycle a one gallon bowl? So far, that seems like the most plausable and sensical way, but how do I cycle a bowl?

 

[sylvia]

You cycle a 1 gallon the same way as any other tank. I'm not sure whether it's practical in such a small volume but all you'd need to do is ensure the bacteria have somewhere to grow (a very thing layer of gravel would do it) and add the fish, which will produce ammonia, that should enable nitrifying bacteria to thrive and convert the ammonia to nitrites and so on. You would still require regular, partial, water changes and make sure there is never any leftover food or you'll have trouble in such a small volume and with ammonia in the new water added. If there was ANY way to add a small enough plant to use up excess nutrients and nitrates, well that would be great. Unfortunately, I can't help you on this matter as I've never kept bettas in this size bowl (only several females in a 10 gallon and a few males at different times in a community tank).

 

[jkun17]

Hmm... I think that might work.

Cycling my bowls... It's a strange idea, but if it works, who am I to complain. That and it'll save me money on buying another bio-wheel and and all that other stuff.

I'll do that right now. Thanks for the advice!!

*edit*

I'll buy some elodea and section it off into smaller parts to soak up the nitrates.

 

[sylvia]

Great! Glad to have helped