@Back in the fold - I bought a bottle of Prime recently, and expect it'll last a very long time. I don't worry about chlorine. I pour from a hose, and most of it gasses of. It has zero effect on the fish in the low concentrations that remain, except for a couple of species. With them, I get no spawning for 4-5 days after a water change. Is it a dislike of fresh water? Could be, but I decided to see if it was that residual chlorine. In my old house, the chlorine was predictable and easy to clear. Here, there are days when the chlorine guys must fall asleep with the chlorine dosing pump on.
I found a syringe to measure the stuff with, and I'm testing it. In my larger tanks, I don't bother. If it makes it easier to breed my couple of sensitive species, then I'll know the chlorine caused problems. The rainbows will lay eggs with fresh water - it stimulates them. I don't worry with them.
If I find it useless, then I can recycle Prime as cologne.
If I start the water and get a face full of chlorine gas, then I use it on all tanks. The dosages are uneven here.
Salt is a problem chemical to me, as it is hard to get out and it does negatively affect my fish. It's an alien substance to my rainforest species here. It affects their breeding, which I see as an indicator of their overall health.
I'll wager that if you're doing water changes your water would smell sweet with carbon too. But carbon is harmless.
Every carbon dechlorination system I've seen pumped the water through lab grade carbon before it ever touched the tanks. It was outside the usual filtration loop.
I don't think it's wrong to be conservative in your fishkeeping ways, but when there's a change for a positive reason, it's worth exploring. Nothing will ever convince me to do a fishless cycle, for example. The chemistry experiment doesn't interest me and I think it's a waste of time and energy unless studying the cycle is the goal. I don't see it as an innovative practice. So I reject it and move on. If I see a thread where people explain it, good for them. Many find it fascinating to work with reagents.
If you salt tanks, that's your approach. The problem comes if you tell others this is what you must do - unless you know why you do things and where they come from, it becomes a ritual and nothing more. You'll end up founding a religion.
The biggest technological advance between when I started keeping fish as a kid 55 years ago and now is the water tap. Once we learned the sink drain and the water tap were key tools in this hobby, the change was spectacular. We could keep all kinds of great species, our tanks didn't smell like swamps, our fish lived longer, we could keep more fish in a tank, plants flourished... kaboom.
What I wish we'd rediscover is between our ears. The oldtimers knew fish were not going to be easily available forever. They tried hard to breed and share out the fish they bought, because they didn't see them pouring in to Petco as a product. They cost too much and supply lines were shaky, and the older generation gardened with their tanks. We buy them like annuals in the Springtime, for them to die in Fall and be bought again, and the whole hobby of breeding and maintaining fish has been withering fast. I'd like to see us get away from the disposable animal approach and not be afraid to get a little serious about the hobby. But that goes beyond salt and carbon.
