# Water Quality Report (West Yorkshire)



## Mr Bee (3 Sep 2008)

After reading a thread on here about water quality reports (had no idea you could get such things!) I have just been looking on the Yorkshire Water website.

They seem to imply that they use chlorine, not chloramine, but I've filled an online contact form to ask them about this.  I also found the latest published water quality report for 2006-2007 which listed the following values:-

Copper = 2mg/L

Nitrate = 50mg/L

Nitrite = 0.5mg/L

Ammonium = 0.5mg/L


Is the copper level in my supply water (2mg/L) likely to be harmful to my shrimp and/or MTS??  I have no idea what sort of levels are dangerous for them  :?


----------



## ceg4048 (3 Sep 2008)

Well you have to be careful when you read the reports because some list the measured values while other list what the Euro regulation maxima are and whether they exceeded these maxima. 2ppm copper sounds high so it's likely that this is the maximum allowable and they did  or did not exceed it. If the maximum was not exceeded this tells you nothing about what the measured value was. Additional care must be taken because they will take many measurement samples from different areas within their zone, sometimes hundreds of samples so you never really know exactly what value is relevant to your street or your house. Also, the values are not necessarily constant throughout the year, so for example the nitrate level could easily rise during the growing season when the farmers fertilize their fields, depending on runoff lag time, and then decline during the winter. If rainfall is low in a particular year the runoff concentration might not be as high, while other parameters might actually have a concentration increase.

Cheers,


----------



## Garuf (3 Sep 2008)

Is a detailed water analysis not available like this one? http://www.stwater.co.uk/upload/pdf/ZSF ... headle.pdf
This one is for where I live, I suspect the super high concentrations of heavy metals to be the reason I can't keep shrimp.


----------



## ceg4048 (3 Sep 2008)

Gareth, those numbers look pretty typical to me. I mean, if you are dosing traces your are dosing orders of magnitude higher heavy metals than even the maxima in the report in your link. Chromium for example is listed at a maximum of 0.0012ppm. The maximum Copper was found to be 0.0022ppm. Iron is listed at 0.1ppm and you probably dose higher values than that in your trace mix. The maximum Lead found was 0.0008ppm and the Selenium was tested at a maximum of 0.00064ppm so these don't seem to be super high to me. Then again I'm not sure of what the invertebrate toxic levels are but I doubt they are that low.

Cheers,


----------



## Mr Bee (4 Sep 2008)

ceg4048 said:
			
		

> Well you have to be careful when you read the reports because some list the measured values while other list what the Euro regulation maxima are and whether they exceeded these maxima.



Aah, Ceg4048, you are right....

I just looked at it again more carefully, and those values are indeed listed as the 'standard' - I assume this means the regulation limit.  Because it then says the number of exceedences.

So all the report tells me is that they didn't go over the 2ppm limit in 611 test samples, but not what the actual measurement recorded was.  This was from a general report here: http://www.yorkshirewater.com/resou... Water 2006 Drinking Water Quality Report.pdf

I have also found another report from 2006 which gives more info, and actually gives the copper reading range from 0.002 - 0.047ppm (but only took 6 test samples).  This report here: http://www.yorkshirewater.com/web/W...1F7E2/$file/Wakefield City North 2004 WSZ.pdf


----------



## ceg4048 (4 Sep 2008)

Yes, exactly. So for shrimp, if you want to take the conservative approach then assume that you have the maximum of 0.047ppm because this is a toxicity issue. Again, this is only an assumption. It doesn't really tell you for certain what's in your house. If you have new copper piping for example then your water may leach copper until the inner surface of the pipe oxidizes.

If you want to be conservative from a _plant nutrition_ standpoint then you would assume you have the minimum values. So for example you would assume your nitrate levels are only 3.7ppm and that your Calcium and Magnesium levels are 21ppm and 2.7ppm respectively. Based on this assumption, you would definitely need to dose KNO3 but not GH Booster or MgSO4.

Monitor and review when the 2008 report comes out as the data are two years old.

Cheers,


----------

