what water conditioner do you guys recommend?

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Ive heard that Prime is the best, I use Amquel + now but I just ordered Prime
 
SeymourFRESH said:
hmmm alright. i know the buffer is the biggest concern for me on the pH factor. but as i said, i would like to keep it alkaline on my 55 and neutral to lower on my 92 gallon. i'll have to figure that out in good time i suppose

what i'm kind of wondering now is this: you guys may think this is kind of a goofy thing for me to ask, but how exactly do you guys make your measurements to condition your water with seachem prime? i realized i'm going to have to try a whole different method to doing this, because here is how we've been doing it:

1) made a reference mark to 3 gallons in our 5 gallon buckets, and filled water up to that line
2) used a 1/4 teaspoon to treat 3 gallons at a time, and mixed accordingly

now what i'm confused on, if i switch to prime, it says 1 cap (5ml) treats 50 gallons. so how exactly do i make a measurement per individual bucket added to the tank? how do you guys condition your water?

good question. I'm running out of my current water conditioner and after reading about seachem prime ivedecidedto switch aswell.
My tank is 48 gal so
this is what i plan on doing following these calculations:

1 capfull is 5ml
5ml=treats 50 gallons. so 1 ml treats 10 gals...
now take half of 1 capfull...

we get:
1/2 capfull(2.5ml)
1/2 capfull=treats 25 gals. take half of this...


we get:
1/4 capfull (1.25ml)
1/4capfull=treats 12.5 gals.

this is around my usual water change.
now i will divide 1/4 capfull into the # of buckets replacing the number taken out. this is usually 3-4.

so using a smal turkey basterlike thing iwill suck up all the prime in the cap (1/4 full).

i will then drop drops back into the cap counting them until the baster is empty of prime. I will then take the number of drops it took to get all the prime out of the baster and write it down or keep it in my short term memory or w.e . lets just say it took 8 drops.

You could also just drip drops filling the cap to 1/4 while counting how many drops it took instead.

which ever way is done, ill then divide that number of drops it took( 8 for example), by the number of buckets used to take out 12.5 gals of water (well use 4 as an example). 8 divided by 4=2.

so now i kno to put 2 drops of prime in each bucket of water i need to declorinate,no matter how many i take out wheter it be 2,3,4 or 8.

now this is just an example i havent actually done it yet but i plan on doing this. it sounds pretty nuts to do it that exactly, but thats just how i am. i use this way to measure the dechlorinator i use right now.

also wen i did my fishless cycle last summer, i measured exactly how many drops i needed of goldex ammonia to make my tank 5 ppm ammonia. i kept adding that many drops each day til nitrite showed up on my tests, then i waited a couple days and continued to add half the amount of drops needed to get to 5 ppm until the tank wud show no ammonia or nitrite within half a day of adding the ammonia to the tank. it worked perfectly in about 20 days or so i think it was.

i duno if ne1 else does it someting like that? i duno but i cant stand guessing and not knowing exactly wutsgoin into the tank. otherwise im also worried if chlorines going in to the tank cause the tapwater here has a good amount of cholrine and some choramine too i beleibe which is i think why alot of petstores around here will test ur water for chlorine for free.
 
8O ...once again...i have failed to read the 2nd page of the post before posting lol :oops: . question already answered! wel its good to kno that many others already use this method and have it figured out for me 8)
 
Hmm.. I have a brand new bottle of Prime that I never use. Right now I'm using Aqua Safe by Tetra since I have 3 bottles of it. I got them all free off craigslist with a big box or other fish goodies. :)

I heard Prime could give you invalid KH or GH readings, is this true?
What would happen if I overdose the Prime? I usually fill a 5gal water bottle and add my dechlorinater while it's still filling up. I use a cap from a Stress Ease bottle because it has the measurements on it but it doesn't have 0.5 on it just has 1.0, 5.0 and 10.0. So I could just eyeball it but what If I don't get 0.5 exactly for my 5gal bottle?
 
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