Any guesses on what bacteria I have?

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Beets

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FYI, found a picture of some biofilm close in color to what I have here. This is on a website selling AIO3.
 

Gsmith22

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Let me preface the following (potentially stupid) question with the fact that I know nothing about AIO (1, 2, 3, etc. :)) other than you are injecting something into the water.

If you believe that the bacteria is aerobic (needing oxygen), wouldn't injecting anything with oxygen in it (that is what AIO does, right?) not make the situation worse? H2O2, Ozone (O3), and air all have oxygen. Dittohead pretty much said the same way back in post #3 that you would end up feeding the bacteria with AIO. What is your reasoning behind the use of AIO?

Maybe this is covered in one of your other threads but its hard to follow/keep straight because effectively you are having 10 conversations at once.

Edit: maybe post 17 in this thread is a brief history? https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/aio3-or-full-on-ozone-system.99108/#post-713450

I note the history of adding oxygen based treatments. I suspect your bacteria/biofilm issue has been around a while, coming and going depending on how much oxygen was being added/what else you were disinfecting with.
 

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Air, chlorine, hydrogen peroxide, ozone, and potassium permanganate are all known as oxidizers. They can all treat H2S (which I have). However, they all have different efficacies with regards to their ability to kill bacteria. Ozone is one of the best bactericides available. Chlorine is also very good one, but it requires contact time. With my high pH water, I need at least 2 to 2.5 times as much retention time as most people. Ozone is extremely unstable (no tanks and not pH sensitive), but extremely short lived (unlike chlorine). H2O2 doesn't require much contact time (or tanks), not sensitive to pH, but is a lousy biocide.

AIO3 does really interest me. I keep digging, and biggest drawback I can find so far is that it is really thirsty (nightly back washes and brine draws will likely consume over 100 gallons/night).
 

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I should mention that AIO adds air to the media during the brine draw every night. This might promote aerobic bacteria growth. AIO3 adds ozone (O3) to the media during the brine draw every night. This will theoretically kill everything.
 

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Ozone that is utilized in an AIO3 system is not delivered continuously. Ozone will rapidly decompose back into its native oxygen state within a few minutes after ozone production has stopped. Oxygen will continue to act as the main oxydizer so the media below can then filter out the oxidized solids which are then backwashed out to drain during each backwash cycle.

The purpose of the ozone is to disinfect the media which will reduce or eliminate bacteria from leaking through the media bed.
 

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I've been running my system on sodium hypochlorite for a month or two and I'm struggling. Immediately, I noted a slight musty smell in the shower. It wasn't offensive and no one else in the house noted it, so not a show stopper. It's just not as nice as hydrogen peroxide. What is a show stopper is that I'm struggling to get the taste out of my drinking water using the reverse osmosis system. I was OK for a week or two, but it's a problem now. If I put the water into my water cooler, after a few days the taste will disappear, suggesting that the taste is from something that oxidizes with time.

In the midst of all of this, I learned that the pool test kit I'm using (OTO) only tests for total chlorine. I don't know how I missed that for 10 or 15 years, but this has likely contributed to past problems with chlorine and maybe even the current problem. I do have some test strips I'm using currently, and , and they suggest I have 3 ppm of free chlorine. I've ordered a Taylor FAS-DPD test kit, but I'm 2 or 3 weeks from getting it (they are hard to get and expensive in Canada). Is it common to see a large difference between total chlorine and free chlorine?

I'm debating going back to hydrogen peroxide, but will continue to give Sodium Hypochlorite a longer trial.

I'm curious if anyone is running UV lights in conjunction with H2O2? Would that give me a means of controlling slime AND the great water I've come to enjoy with H2O2?
 

Gsmith22

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I've been running my system on sodium hypochlorite for a month or two and I'm struggling. Immediately, I noted a slight musty smell in the shower. It wasn't offensive and no one else in the house noted it, so not a show stopper. It's just not as nice as hydrogen peroxide. What is a show stopper is that I'm struggling to get the taste out of my drinking water using the reverse osmosis system. I was OK for a week or two, but it's a problem now. If I put the water into my water cooler, after a few days the taste will disappear, suggesting that the taste is from something that oxidizes with time.

In the midst of all of this, I learned that the pool test kit I'm using (OTO) only tests for total chlorine. I don't know how I missed that for 10 or 15 years, but this has likely contributed to past problems with chlorine and maybe even the current problem. I do have some test strips I'm using currently, and , and they suggest I have 3 ppm of free chlorine. I've ordered a Taylor FAS-DPD test kit, but I'm 2 or 3 weeks from getting it (they are hard to get and expensive in Canada). Is it common to see a large difference between total chlorine and free chlorine?

I'm debating going back to hydrogen peroxide, but will continue to give Sodium Hypochlorite a longer trial.

I'm curious if anyone is running UV lights in conjunction with H2O2? Would that give me a means of controlling slime AND the great water I've come to enjoy with H2O2?
large differences between free chlorine and total chlorine indicate lots of stuff is being killed by the chlorine. Free chlorine is active hypochlorite available for killing things. When the chlorine kills stuff, it creates chloramines which are just the byproducts of chlorine mixing with organic matieral and this is no longer available to kill stuff. Total chlorine is free chlorine+chloramines. In a "clean" system, total chlorine = free chlorine because there are no byproducts of stuff being killed. You need to know free chlorine and total chlorine. Knowing just total chlorine is useless.

I meantioned in this or one of your other threasd about reading up on this stuff with respect to pool sanitation using troublefreepool.com. Guessing you didn't do that? For removal of chlorine and chloramines for taste considerations, you want to run the water through carbon filtration as the last step in the treatment (after of course everything gets killed by the chlorine).
 

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@gsmith22 Thank you. I wasn't ignoring you or your prior post (I've read in it in the last 10 days). I've also done lots of reading at troublefreepool.com. If I'm guilty of anything, it's being very slow :) There are too many options! Everyone's fall back for bacteria/slime is chlorine, but I'm not reading of folks that are treating for bacteria AND have a pH of 8.6. I can reduce the pH when I shock (and I did this last time), but I'm more interested in setting up a system that doesn't need to be shocked more than once a year and doesn't have any upsets (H2S slippage).
 

Gsmith22

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@gsmith22 Thank you. I wasn't ignoring you or your prior post (I've read in it in the last 10 days). I've also done lots of reading at troublefreepool.com. If I'm guilty of anything, it's being very slow :) There are too many options! Everyone's fall back for bacteria/slime is chlorine, but I'm not reading of folks that are treating for bacteria AND have a pH of 8.6. I can reduce the pH when I shock (and I did this last time), but I'm more interested in setting up a system that doesn't need to be shocked more than once a year and doesn't have any upsets (H2S slippage).
chlorine is the fallback because it works. the vast majority of municipal water supplies in the world use it to treat their water. A whole lot more research and money have been devoted to those water supplies than you will be capable of expending. What do you know that they don't?

If you are having to shock the system on a continuous basis (annually, semi-annually, etc.), that means that either 1) bacteria/slime isn't being killed by the shock and somewhere it is hanging around in the system only to regenerate at a later date OR 2) the bacteria/slime is entering from the outside your shocked system and eventually fouling it. Figure out which of these is the culprit.

On pH, you don't have to reduce it much as generally you want drinking water above 7 (so not acidic) and below 8 - I would think you could inject a weak/diluted acid ahead of chlorine treatment. I don't think you are going to find some magic solution that clears bacteria and adjusts pH in one fell swoop.
 

Beets

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@gsmith22 Thank you. There is definitely bacteria in my well. There might not be at the moment because I shocked within the last number of weeks at +200 ppm for 24hours. What's frustrating is that shock treatment caused me to have to replace my pump, and I've now gone a silt/sand production problem. It's not a big problem, but it wasn't a problem before the shock. That's another topic.

Does anyone know how long chlorine has to be in the water to remove the H2S? Is that a pH based answer?

I suspect I need more contact time, or I need to reduce pH as you have suggested if I want to live with Chlorine. I just got a call yesterday that chlorine is in. Still waiting for reagents/test kit to show up. May give in another try. In the meantime, I'm enjoying great water with H2O2.
 

Bannerman

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Since the bacteria issue is returning soon after shocking the well, a better solution will likely be to inject chlorine directly before the water enters a contact tank. A sufficiently sized contact tank will provide the contact time needed to neutralize the bacteria and a blowout valve at the bottom of the tank will allow oxidized solids that accumulate on the tank bottom, to be discharged to drain.

A back washing carbon filtration system directly following the contact tank, will eliminate any residual chlorine while also filtering out any oxidized residue that is carried out from the contact tank into the carbon tank.

While H2O2 is highly effective to oxidize iron, manganese and H2S, it is not recommended when there is bacteria present as the oxygen produced, will often make a bacteria problem worse.
 

Beets

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Thank you. Hopefully my test kit and chlorine show up shortly, so I can get some better measurements to figure out what is going on. My experience seems to run contrary to everyone else's. I've been thinking it is my high pH, but maybe it's just back chlorine measurements. I do know that CT charts suggest I need almost twice as long to disinfect at a pH of 8.6 as the folks who are at a pH of 7. But that is for one type of bacteria, and who knows if that applies to my bacteria. I've also read some papers that suggest that it is much easier to remove H2S at my pH than lower pH because at my pH the H2S is all aqueous and not in gas form at all at this pH. I'm not sure if that paper was speaking about oxidizers in general of chlorine. I feel like the chlorine isn't oxidizing the H2S nearly as effectively as the H2O2.
 
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