Serious Water Quality issues

For years I have collected rain water to use with breeding my bettas and never had any problems with it at all. I also mix half rain water and half aged tap water for my other tanks. With the recent rain that we have been having I was on my collecting spree for more rain water and managed over 100 gallons easily. But the problem is when I changed out the water in my betta fry tank I noticed that I lost all of the fry. Thinking that something must have gone wrong (other than water issues), I changed out the water in my native fry tank. At the same time I did all this yesterday I added water to my buckets that were holding the fish that were supposed to be shipped today. After 15 mins or so I noticed that one of my redfin pickerel had turned belly up. PANIC now sets in. I forgot about the native fry tank and quickly changed the water in the buckets with the redfins, pirate perch, and mud minnows to straight aged tap water. Worried that they were not going to make it I went on to bed. This morning I got up to find all had made a fine recovery, Except the native fry they were all dead. The only thing different that I did for collecting water this time was the tarp that collected the water before going into my trash cans.

90% of the water that I collect comes from the roof of my house, then it is run through a carbon filter and two fiber filters to remove any dirt or other debris. The only time there was ever a problem doing this was when the shingles on my old house got replaced and I had to wait 2-3 months and several rains in order to start collecting again. But at this house I have a large back deck and recently purchased a canopy top for my deck furniture. I noticed that the rain liked to collect in the pockets around the frame, so hey easy water collecting. Something went wrong here though because now all of my rain water is contaminated with something.

So after taking the time to read all of that, would anyone have any idea as to what would be in the canopy cover that would be harmful to fish?

Fish reaction to this water was nothing to note, like heavy breathing there was none, shaking or scratching nope, just normal swimmng about and then belly up. Almost like they were put to sleep and then when placed back in known good water, just woke back up.

On a side note what causes a milky white film to appear on top of tap water? I condition it using a chlorine remover and add black water extract, and have a small pump running to keep it circulated in the aging tub. As soon as I put it in a tank where it can settle out this film starts to appear. I can scoop it off with a brine shrimp net and get a lot of it but some breaks up into small pieces just to reform on the top again. Any idea about that?

Mike, What type of material is the canopy cover constructed of? If it is UV protected there are often further additives to synthetic covers/mebranes and plastics that may contaminate the runoff. If you can give me the material name or Brandname I may be able to find out any potential water quality associated issues with it.

Hopefully this link will work but here is the exact one that we have.

Canopy

Without knowing the exact waterproofing/weatherproofing/UV protectant used on the canopy material it is hard to say what may have contaminated the water. However, I did find some reference to environmental and worker health hazards associated with many commercial coating products. From what I read many of these products use solvents which are or contain VOCs (voloatile organic compounds) which are not generally good things to be exposed to. The smaller the organism the lower the concentrations that could possibly adversely affect them. My recommendation would be to not use the water collected from the canopy. Most VOCs do not mix with water and have a lower specific gravity than water may create a sheen or layer on the surface. (Gasoline is an example of a VOC that we are all familiar with). That may be the origin of the cludy substance on your water surface. That's my 3.5 cents.


http://stinet.dtic.m...ifier=ADA359280

I would be willing to bet that the canopy has mildiside either sprayed on it or in it.

the water off your roof should be ok

Do you live in an area where they spray for misquotes?
or even in a rural area, there could be over spray from crop dusters? (air planes)

The sheen on the top of the water that I am refering to was just from my tap water. That part had nothing to do with the rain water really. But I will take a look at the water that I got off the canopy when I get home today and see if it has a sheen on it. I planned to dump it out anyways, but it would still be nice to know what was causing it.

Thanks for all the replies,

What is the best way to make very hard tap water soft without using a R/O system?

Also if I were to use a R/O system how should the water be conditioned before use? I know that R/O systems remove some good things from the water so is there any way to put those back?

What is the best way to make very hard tap water soft without using a R/O system?

In one of the two volumes of "For What It's Worth" published by Freshwater and Marine Aquarium Magazine, plans were described for what amounted to a poor man's water softener. The design was basically a square waterproof box with a glass top that was slanted. The device operated on the premise that if put in direct sunlight, water inside the box would vaporize, condense on the underside of the glass and then, because of the slant of the glass, dribble down the glass and collect in a collecting device somehow rigged up at the lowest-most edge of the glass top. The design certainly wasn't designed by a chemist, but seems like at least some minerals would be left in suspension in the starting pool in the box, resulting in somewhat softened water dribbling into the collection device.

At any rate, if you've never seen the "For What It's Worth" books, they're worth checking out if you're a do-it-yourselfer. Lots of the projects are downright silly, but there are some useful basic things like plywood and all-glass tank construction, undergravel filter construction, and building a canister filter using a piece of large diameter PVC.

Travis

The white film you mentioned in your first post that you can scoop off with a brine shrimp net kinda sounds like a protein film. Is it kinda scummy or resemble the film that forms in the pot when you are hard boiling eggs and one of them cracks? I'm not sure how else to describe it. I've seen it form when a stream gets slowed down in a pile of log debris and a white foam will build up. It also builds up in marine aquariums, too. If it's a persistent problem then you can invest in skimmers to keep it cleaned for you. If it's just an occasional thing, scooping with a brine shrimp net will be fine.

That is what it sounds like, but it is comming from my tap water. Needless to say I got fed up with it yesterday and purchased a R/O system. So I wont have to worry about that problem any more.

Now I just have to get my 85 gallon built, I have all the parts just got to assemble. ( <-- thinking out loud )

Make sure you get some RO Right (I think that's what it's called). It'll replace the good stuff back in your water that RO removes.