Water Conditioners - Prime

[CaptnIgnit]

K so I have a few questions still lingering in my mind about these. I use Prime at my place and most of them revolve around it.

1. How long does it take for the conditioner to get rid of the chlorine/chloramine?
2. Is it safe to add the conditioner straight to your aquarium water and then dump in tap water into your aquarium?
3. Prime says that detoxifies ammonia, nitirites, and nitrates. Can the bacteria still use them? can plants still use the detoxified nitrates?
4. Will Prime hurt the cycle if used during the cycle?
5. does Prime scale when used? it lists 5ml per 50 gallons, so can I do .1 ml/gallon with the same effectiveness as 5ml in 50 gallons?

TIA

[rich311k]

1. Almost instantly
2. Yes
3. Not sue one the ammonia/nitrite question but I am pretty sure it is. I use prime and my plants have plenty of nitrates.
4. It will not delay your cycle.
5. yes 1 ml per ten gallons = .1 ml per gallon

[CaptnIgnit]

ah k, thanks much rich!

So if I were to do a 50% water change on my 20 gallon and only wanted to clear up the chlorine/chloramine, I could put 1ml of prime in the tank and then dump in the 10 gallons of tap water?

[rich311k]

You got it. Just be sure the temperature is fairly close.

[src]

Most people would put in 2 ml - the theory is that when adding the Prime to the tank, you treat the volume of the tank, not the volume of the water change. If you were adding Prime to the tap water before introducing it to the tank then you would add 1 ml.

[CaptnIgnit]

That is what I was curiuos about, and I suppose as long as it doesn't hurt the cycle no reason not to put 2ml in.

Thanks for all the help!

[jsoong]

Actually I think the amount to add is based on the amount of Chloramines/chlorine that you need to neutralized and not water volume <read the fine prints on Prime & it list dose per mg of Chloramines>. So you really only need the amount of Prime for the volume of change water .... but then, Prime is cheap & you can add up to 5x the dose, it won't hurt if you use the ml for total tank volume either.

[src]

Unfortunately, my tap water doesn't come with a breakdown of what's in it today. While you can get a full water report from your utility, that's a list of what is in the water at their end of the line, not what comes out of your tap, and it also varies over time. The best most of us can do is just follow the per gallon dosing recommendations, and hope that no one sat on the "chloramine injection" button at the water treatment facility.

[ezy33]

My Bala Sharks tell me to treat the water before putting it in the tank.

[7Enigma]

As per the bottle, a normal dose of Prime will remove 3ppm of chloramines from the water. If you do an ammonia test prior to adding the water in, the amount of ammonia you detect is the amount of chloramines present. But as others have mentioned, rather than do a test, I add the proper amount of Prime to my bucket before adding to the tank, so even if I know I probably don't need a full dose, its better to play it safe.