ray-the-pilot

Like most people I haven’t paid any attention to the level of chlorides in my tank. Last week just out of curiosity I checked a sample for chlorides using AgNO3 test solution. None were detected! This was really surprising since my tank is made up of 10 – 20% tap water and the remainder RO water. My city water has about 50 ppm chlorides: so my expectation was 5 ppm or more.

I made a 5 ppm chloride solution using KCl and tinkered with it. Clearly my city water produced way more precipitate than the 5ppm solution and my tank didn’t produce any. I diluted the 5ppm solution and estimated that my tank was probably less than 0.1 ppm chlorides.

I replaced 10% of my tank water with city water and rechecked the chloride level. It was slightly more than 5 ppm. The next day I recheck and found only a trace. I replaced another 10% of my tank water and found the Cl- to be over 5 ppm. The following day the level was below 5 ppm but over a trace. Now I check the Cl- every few days. It seems to be stable now between 5 and .5 ppm.

I didn’t notice any problems with plant growth in fact I would actually like my plant to grow slower.

One thing I did notice and posted this elsewhere was that my SAE’s were aggressively eating my plants. It may be they were making up for low salt levels in the water by eating more plants.

Now I’m wondering about the Na+ levels?