Making tap water safe

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

lovemybarbs

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Feb 5, 2006
Messages
863
Location
St. Louis, Missouri
I recently found out I was adding my dechlorinator at the wrong time and now I'm paranoid I'm going to poison my fish. Figuring out how much conditioner to add to little buckets of fresh water I add is irritating. I make several trips because the water can get heavy. :oops:

I have a 29 gallon tank so I just added approximately 3 tsp. of conditioner to my tank before I added the fresh water. The conditioner calls for 1 tsp per 10 gallons (close enough). Am I doing this right. Adding the condition to the water right before adding the fresh water is correct, right???

Thanks.
 
rich gave the concise answer. Now it's time for the long winded version :p

This is an abbreviated version of the answer to a similar question answered quite a few years ago (when these "multi-chemical-removing-tap-water-conditioners" became popular) by Dr. Anthony Calflo. Any mistakes are likely mine, and not from Dr. Calflo :)

The "stuff" (tap water conditioner, for ease of typing I'll call it stuff from now on) has X number of free molecules available to bind with whatever chemical compound it claims to remove. For simplicity's sake lets say 1 tsp has 1000 of these molecules to bind chlorine.

These molecules will float around until they can find a chlorine molecule to attach themselves to. When they find one, they bind themselves to it, turning it from chlorine, which is posionous to fish, to another less harmful chemical compound. When 1000 chlorine molecules have been found, the tsp. has done all it can do to "remove" chlorine from the water. To take out any more, you need to add more stuff.

Now lets consider that tsp of stuff has 1000 molecules that seek out chlorine, 1000 that seek out chloramine, 1000 that seek out ammonia, and 1000 that seek out copper. It doesn't matter when you add the tsp of stuff, these molecules will bounce around your tank water until they find a suitable chemical compound to attach themselves to. In theory, with enough water circulation this could be instant. In a more practical example, as long as your water is circulating as it should be, the stuff will bind to the chemical compounds faster than your fish can run them through their gills. The stuff is always able to remove quite a bit more unwanted chemicals than the volume of water listed for dosage. This doesn't mean you can use less, it means it will remove the chemicals faster and unused binding compounds either break down and leave the water as a gas, or are inert and remain in the water column until they find a chemical molecule they can attach to.

Are we sufficiently bored yet? :)
 
I use prime. If you mean stress coat, I do not think it is needed. It will not hurt, but not needed. It is also expensive.
 
rich311k said:
I use prime. ...

As do I. I have noticed that eventually all aquarists dedicated enough to participate on an internet fish fourm will eventually gravitate towards Seachem products. Are they better, or are we being brainwashed?

As a side note here, I've used and can say the following all will work more than adequate :
Doc Wellfish conditioner
Amquel and Amquel+
Jungle tap water conditioner
TopFin (PetSmart branded)

I'm sure most if not all brands work just fine. Seachem products aren't exactly cheap, so maybe we are being brainwashed :p
 
I added AquaSafe before the tap was added. It has slime, but I have read somewhere else that it did make someone's fish itch so they avoided the one with the coat. I guess no one else here has experienced that. When I noticed the scratching I added some Wardley 4 in 1 7.0 ph water conditioner. It is supposed to eliminate chlorine, neutralize ammonia and buffer to 7.0.
 
Hillbilly Jerry said:
rich gave the concise answer. Now it's time for the long winded version :p

Thanks for the explanation. Helped me. 8)

BTW, I have enough dechlorinator on hand for the next 5 years -- went a little overboard.
 
lovemybarbs said:
I added AquaSafe before the tap was added. It has slime, but I have read somewhere else that it did make someone's fish itch so they avoided the one with the coat. I guess no one else here has experienced that. When I noticed the scratching I added some Wardley 4 in 1 7.0 ph water conditioner. It is supposed to eliminate chlorine, neutralize ammonia and buffer to 7.0.

Shouldn't use chemicals that buffer the ph. A stable ph is better than one that bounces around. you may buffer it ti 7.0, but within a couple days, it will be back to where it was. So the best thing, use Prime to dechlorinate the water and call it good. Fresh PWC's at a regular basis will do all the buffering you need. And if you feel you need to raise/lower the ph, do it more naturally, like adding some crushed coral in the filter to raise the ph or driftwood to lower like I do. Other than that, no chemicals.
 
Listen to Lonewolfblue in all things. (speaking of brainwashed...) Seriously, buffering the ph is BAD.

Nothing else to add. *basks in the glory of others and rides into the sunset*

8O*remembers something important and rides back*

If you have a 29 gallon, you will be much happier doing water changes if you make the investment in a python. Yeah, they aren't cheap. But water changes are SO much quicker and SO much more enjoyable than using the bucket method.
 
I dont think that blue crystal stuff actually removes chlorine so careful because they call that a water conditioner. What does it do? i was told to use it just to incresase hardness
 
Prime is a complete conditioner for both marine and freshwater use that removes chlorine, chloramine, and detoxifies ammonia and nitrite. It also provides essential ions and stimulates natural slime coat. It will also detoxify any heavy metals found in the tap water at typical concentration levels.

It comes in different sizes from about 8oz to the gallon. Check out the link and you can see what the bottle looks like.

http://www.bigalsonline.com/catalog/product.xml?product_id=28317;category_id=2229
 
You all are so helpful!! :D

I do have some Ammo Lock that I had forgotten I had bought for ammonia when I first started up. Would that be a bad idea for dechlor or should I just go with the Prime? It does say it is for dechlorinator.
 
Just go with Prime only. The largest you can get for Prime is 4 Liter bottles. But unless you have tons of tanks, wouldn't need that much. I usually get the 500ml for 9.99.
 
Back
Top Bottom