Water Purification

[hellosailor]

Sailingdog-
Iodine CAN give you the runs, for the same reason that antibiotics often will. Iodine kills all the microcritters, and if there's enough of it in your drinking water, it will neatly kill all the intestinal bacteria just as neatly. Ooops, no bacteria, the gut stops working right.
I'm not sure how dosage-sensitive that is, can't seem to find any information on the web about how much is too much that way.

[sailingdog]

True, but I don't think they used that much iodine...However, I wasn't there... so I can't say exactly what happened for sure. Might have been the increased iodine from the salt water...but in either case, I wouldn't want the runs for five days..

[hellosailor]

"I don't think they used that much iodine"
For some people, yogurt improves intestinal critters, for others, just one cup will trigger lactose intolerance and runs. I'd guess iodine tolerance would also vary with the victim, and how healthy the victim's "critters" were to start with. Like h.pylori (the stomach ulcer bug) and how acidic your stomach is, some people just have difference ecosystems in there.

[PaulBl]

If there is no light then you can never grow algea. Most tanks really are dark inside and so this is not the issue. Algea is a plant that requires sun light.

The issue is what water you choose to put in the tank. Pre filtering water before you add it to the tanks goes farther than anything else. You can rig up a set of two stage whole house filters that you can connect up to your hose to fill your tanks with filtered water. In a dark tank water can stagnate for a long period of time and still be safe. In a tank that gets sun light it won't last more than a week or so and you can never keep it clean.

Publicly treated water is about as chlorinated as required adding more won't really improve the safety of the water. Adding other chemicals probably won't help either. Perfoming a shock treatment on the tank does not require a very high level of Chlorine and should not be needed regualrly. Using a higher does really won't do much more. You need to be kind to your plastic plumbing and high concetrations of chlorine won't help. Don't play chemistry set with your drinking water.

If the water needs Iodine I'm not putting it in my tank.

Adding a tap filter is not a bad way towards making your water taste a bit better either. Put the most attention to what you put inside the tank in the first place. You can't make a cocktail that will clean contaminated water once it is inside the tank.

[hellosailor]

Paul-
Never say never.
" Photosynthetic Algae Altered To Grow Without Sunlight

For the first time, scientists have introduced a fundamental metabolic change in a single-celled alga so that it no longer requires light to grow.
Photosynthetic algae are the major primary producers in aquatic environments. They are also used in industry for food, to make pigments and cosmetics, and for other applications.

Until now, these organisms have mostly been grown in open ponds where the variability of the environment, light limitation and contamination with microbes are frequent problems.

Scientists have now found that by inserting just one gene that catalyzes glucose transport into the diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum, the organism can thrive in the dark, getting its energy exclusively from the glucose.

This marks a critical first step toward large-scale, high-density, cost effective cultivation of algae using fermentation technology. The results of this study are published in today's issue of Science."
[from http://unisci.com/stories/20012/0615013.htm ]

What about the stuff that grows on the water interface in diesel tanks? Isn't that biomass algae also? Growing without air or light?