County's treating my water with chloramine, should I not use it? Am suspecting it's hurting them..

SU2

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My county's doing ~1mo of chloramine treatment to clean the pipes, we're about halfway through that right now but after 2wks of it I'd swear that my trees just look less-healthy :/

I'm going to switch to bottled-water for them until the treatment ends, but am still curious to know whether it's likely that was causing it! There's 1 other variable I can think of causing this, though I've got a lot of trouble imagining that it's the case- around 1.5wks ago I put down my first 'extended release' fertilizer, however I'd been giving my trees a strong, frequent intake of balanced, instant-release fertilizer, and the granules I put down were espoma's GardenTone, a 3-4-4 organic timed-release, and I only applied at ~2/3-3/4th the recommended-rate and backed my instant-release fertilizer schedule down a bit, so it's incredibly hard to think that's the cause but I couldn't rule it out so figured to mention it! I've already setup a tester tree with 2x the recommended dosage of GardenTone to see how it fares, if the thing starts getting sick I'll know it's that (and race to bare-root/re-pot the tree that's my guinea-pig here!)

Thanks for any thoughts on this, even guesses would be appreciated!!
 

JoeH

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I ran out of rain water during a dry spot in the summer and had to use the hose and managed to kill two azaleas and just about smoked a sycamore, too. Not sure what was in the water but never again.
 
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SU2

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I ran out of rain water during a dry spot in the summer and had to use the hose and managed to kill two azaleas and just about smoked a sycamore, too. Not sure what was in the water but never again.
Jesus that's frightening! How do you collect rainwater? I'd considered that before, but directing rain from my roof is all I could imagine doing and I know that my roof-water is gross (if I've got a bucket under the eave/gutters and it rained overnight, there's so much crud in it, from debris that got on the roof to little chunks of asphalt/grit from the shingles, always figured it'd be bad to use on my trees!)

I'm under the impression that leaving a bucket of chloramine-treated water to sit overnight will 'gas off' some of the chloramine, just have no idea whether we're talking 90% of it or 5%! (note- this is not the case with chlorine-treated water, which the county used to use for cleaning their pipes!)
 

GrimLore

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My county's doing ~1mo of chloramine treatment to clean the pipes, we're about halfway through that right now but after 2wks of it I'd swear that my trees just look less-healthy :/

They look less healthy as the length of day shortens. That dose to clean pipes is healthy and of value. Bottom line is if you can drink it so can your plants...

If you are worried about it anyways fill water containers with it and let is air off for 24 hours. If you are really concerned toss an inline filter for the house BUT be aware that you should let it run without the filter at changing for a few days so your household piping gets treated proper.

Crystal is a Water and Waste Water Engineer here in PA - that amount is within regulation and safe - it also improves your water quality at the tap.

Grimmy
 
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You can get a diverter that goes in line in your downspout that feeds into your rain barrel. I have 3 and use them to water when I can water by hand.

Have mosquitos ever been a concern? I used to have the idea of doing this and letting a larvae eating fish like the gambusia live in there, but then I realized what will I do with the fish in the winter. Next thing I know I would be building a pond and have too many projects at once.

@SU2 My best bud works at our water treatment plant and I'm playing disc golf with him tomorrow. I will follow up on that for you, but I remember discussing this in the past with regards to concern about my fish tanks and was told either don't worry or let the water sit out over night. If you really wanted to go nuts you could look at commercially available de-chlorinators for fish tanks. Seachem Prime is what I use for my planted tanks, but I feel that's overkill here. PS most don't deal with chloramine so you would need to look carefully
 

JudyB

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Have mosquitos ever been a concern?
I have not had any problems with it, as long as there is no water sitting on the lid. I suppose you could put a mosquito dunk in the barrel, don't think that would hurt anything.
 

sorce

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My best bud works at our water treatment plant

Mine too! Fishing buddy!

He gave me three rain barrels. Complete with debris net, gutter section, overflow and spigot.

@SU2 the municipalities give them away for free...
With the sinkholes in Florida.....
I figure they WANT you to collect rainwater!

Clean your gutters!

You can throw some charcoal in the debris net as a filter if you need.

Rain better all day!

Cuz...just because we CAN drink it....
Doesn't mean we SHOULD!

Think Flint!

Sorce
 

just.wing.it

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I collected rain water my first year in practicing bonsai...
Stopped doing it because as the water rolls across asphalt shingles, it picks up oil, or something that ends up in the water... kinda freaked me out... maybe if I had a slate or metal roof I'd do it again.
My trees have no problems with the tap water here, azaleas included.
 

hemmy

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I collected rain water my first year in practicing bonsai...
Stopped doing it because as the water rolls across asphalt shingles, it picks up oil, or something that ends up in the water... kinda freaked me out... maybe if I had a slate or metal roof I'd do it again.
My trees have no problems with the tap water here, azaleas included.
I was going to call B.S. on anything from your roof hurting trees, but I guess if you have shingles with some type of anti-moss coating that would be counter-productive for your nice mossed bonsai! Or a copper roof and acid rain, but if you had a copper roof you could probably afford to water with Avian bottled water!

https://extension.psu.edu/rain-barrels
 

MichaelS

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Chloramine takes days to evaporate. It's much more stable than chlorine. If you fill a big tank with it you should be able to use it after a week??
 
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just.wing.it

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I was going to call B.S. on anything from your roof hurting trees, but I guess if you have shingles with some type of anti-moss coating that would be counter-productive for your nice mossed bonsai! Or a copper roof and acid rain, but if you had a copper roof you could probably afford to water with Avian bottled water!

https://extension.psu.edu/rain-barrels
And I don't know that it would have hurt anything, it just looked nasty and smelled weird...
It made me think I might as well water my trees with water from a puddle in a Walmart parking lot....
The oils floating on top were visible... harmful, I don't know...

Interesting little article there....I don't feel so bad anymore.
 

JoeH

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I've used my rain water set up for 6 years with no adverse issues. On the other hand, one time I was empty and had to use tap water for my baby turtles. Before I put the turtles back in, the feeder tadpoles died in seconds.
 

Ingvill

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I would definetly recommend my method to you all;
1: Send your spouse out with a busload of empty water bottles.
2: Give directions to the nearest creek.
3: Tell them to not come back until all bottles are full, we don't care if people walking by are giving them weird looks!

(We have excellent quality tap water here. But my mind has decided, true or not, that there are more nutrients in creek water...and embarrassing my hubby is always an added bonus :p )
 

Ingvill

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Hahah! You know the fancy bottled water called Voss?
Them fancy glass bottles that costs a small fortune?
Voss is simply tapped from the same water source that normal tap water comes from....
So yep; our creek water should be a gold mine then! :p
 
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