water drum cleaning

hi,

I recently acquired a 220lt drum that i want to use to age my water. The thing is, is that it was used to store olives and so smells like olive brine. What could I use to safely clean it? could i use sunlight washing up liquid or kleen green? i've tried bicarb and white vinegar, but haven't been able to remove the smell.

Also, how long can i age water for? I will go through the entire 220lt in a week, but want to know if i can refill it straight away and leave it to age for 6/7 days?

Thanks,

 

A high pressure sprayer should be able to clean it well. Maybe let some water stand in it before putting it into your aquarium, as to let the brine leach back into the water. Did that make sense?

 

use a mild mix of bleach and water dude then rince and flush

 

To me it did - I would actually use old tank water .. being doing some reading on microbial propagation in that they use tank water to cultivate additional bacteria to feed back to salty tanks. So it stands to reason if you can use old tank water and it goes all green and foul you should be good to use the container to mature water - not that I think letting water with chloramine stand actually works ... I need to go read up on that again.

What does CT have, chloride or chloramine?

Later F

 

Indeed - not that wikipedea is all and all l- also think it was discussed on TASA before . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloramine

"Removing chloramine from water

Chloramine can be removed from tap water by treatment with superchlorination (10 ppm or more of free chlorine, such as from a dose of sodium hypochlorite bleach or pool sanitizer) while maintaining a pH of about 7 (such as from a dose of hydrochloric acid). Hypochlorous acid from the free chlorine strips the ammonia from the chloramine, and the ammonia outgasses from the surface of the bulk water. This process takes about 24 hours for normal tap water concentrations of a few ppm of chloramine. Residual free chlorine can then be removed by exposure to bright sunlight for about 4 hours."

another nice link on the evil chloramine Chloramine Facts - Citizens Concerned About Chloramine (CCAC)

 

I purchased the same drum a while ago. Rinsed it with vinegar and tank water a few times and left it to dry. Smell is gone now.

You must check the lid of the drum. Mine was extremely dirty. Most of the smell comes from there. I don't use it.

 

If you don't mind me asking how much did these old olive drums go for?

 

We have chlorine in the tap water.

 

@jpvd007 I paid about R170.

 

awesome, thanks guys! wow, R170 is fantastic. got mine for R230 which i thought was really good! lol @mxz, are yours the blue or black drums?
think i might just go get another one :bigsmile:

 

@Valenshki I have the black drum.