I keep a couple of wood shelves at the back of my GH. There's a stereo (for listening while I work on my plants), plant-related books, and two shelves hold my 1/2 gallon milk jugs with water. Now I use RO water, so it's not because I'm letting the chlorine dissipate. I just need to have plenty of water on hand when I'm ready to water. 10 jugs total (5 gallons) and I end up going through that much about twice a week.

Denise in Omaha

As someone who also keeps fish I have become aware of the fact that some municipalities use both Chlorine and Chloramine in water treatment. Chlorine will dissipate but it is suggested that you aerate the water to speed this up. Apparently chloramine does not dissipate so easily and because it is essentially an Ammonia molecule with a Chlorine atom in place of one of the Hydrogen atoms it is very toxic to fish and irritating to animals as well. I am not sure just what effects the amounts in drinking water have on plants but you can buy an aquarium water conditioner to remove both Chlorine and Chloramine from tap water.
I use water conditioners for my fish tanks but I use water straight from the tap for my plants and there is a detectible smell of Chlorine in my city's water. You will have to check with your municipality to see if Chloramine is used in your area but it's use is quite common.
My most sensitive fish that come from areas with very acid and mineral free water get a 50/50 mix of tap/reverse osmosis water and I use this aquarium water for some of my plants as well.
If you really want to reclaim your water storage area for another use I would recommend using the aquarium water conditioner, you only need a tiny amount to treat the water so it last for quite a while.

Mike

Ha! I do the same thing Mike. I am too tight on space to keep gallons of water around so I use the water conditioner for my fish tank on the water for my plants.

I age my tap water in plastic gallon jugs.

I have four gallon jugs, and one 2 gallon pump sprayer. I use water from the tap. I add 1/4 teasp fertilizer to each gallon. I change from a blossom booster fert. to a regular one. I can't remember the #s because the label is faded.

at the moment we live in the country so we have a water tank so the water comes off the roof so no chemicals in it.

I store my water in 5 gal carboys that I mix fertilizer into. The carboys are nice because they have a spout that I can fill my watering can or chemical wash bottle with. I used to store water in gal jugs but have had too many instances where the jug springs a small leak that soaks into my carpet without my knowing. I got really tired of it, so I've been sending the jugs off with the recycling and now only use the carboys.

I'm fortunate to have a 55 gallon Rain Barrel that catches the rain from a roof eaves. I've only ran out of Rain water once since I installed it almost 4 years ago and that only lasted for 2 days, rained right after. So, its been working out great for me...

Mike, great idea getting some of those drops from the Pet store for fishes to remove chlorine and Chloramines...for those rare occasions that I might need to use tap water (my tap water is very high in chlorine)!

I feel so lucky to have excellent water (except for it being hard water) in Hawaii. I do however collect rainwater and store them in a line of five gallon buckets connected to each other by plastic tubing (secured on the bottom of each bucket in a continued strand of eight buckets. Providing that the rain isn't gushing out of the funnel, it evenly flows through filling each bucket at a steady equilibrium. After they are filled, I then cover them with their lids and hold them when I need fresh water. The last bucket has a spout that can be flipped up to release and turned off when flipping down. I use rainwater to water wet soils for seedling, sporelings and seed germination starts on my rarer stuff.
Rainwater is also excellent to use as a fertilizer solution to hand cup/ladle to each pot for sensitive plants.

Interesting!

I'll have to check and see if my municipality uses chloramine.

The carboy is a good idea, but I'd need some easy way to get the water out... bad back and all that.

Here's another aquarium trick. Get some flexible tubing and you can place the tube into the container (aka carboy in this case) and then suck the other end of the tube for a second until you can feel the water start to move and then turn upside down into the watering container until its almost full. Then pull it out facing up and the suction will stop. The one requirement is that the water level in the original container has to be higher than then transfer container.

Mike, thank you very much for that tip about the chlorine/chloramine issue with municipal water additives. I did not know that it took a lot more than just leaving 'Big Gulp' cups all over the kitchen for 24 hours. I checked TampaBay Water inc. and although we use a de-salinisation plant for our supply, it is mixed with other sources and heavily chlorinated. I zipped over to Pet Smart and bought a small bottle of aquarium conditioner like you mentioned.

And thanks to everyone else here, who are always so willing to share their built up knowlege with us 'newbies'.

poseidon