Chlorine / Bleach dissipation

[seangee]

I use RO water and store it in plastic jerry cans. I have a total or 4x25 litre and 9x10 litre cans.
I have had these for several years and the insides are a bit mucky - just a bit of algae as they are not stored in the dark so I have never worried about it. But I decided they should get a clean. It doesn't seem right to throw away perfectly good lumps of plastic to replace with exactly the same. So tonight I bleached 3 of the cans. They look like new and I won't be using them again this year as I'm going away for a couple of weeks. They have been thoroughly rinsed. My thoughts are:

1. Fill with tap water and add some Seachem Safe (same as Prime but much more concentrated because its meant for large ponds)
2. Empty tomorrow, rinse some more and leave open to completely dry while I'm away
3. Fill with RO when I get back and use it

Is this enough? Only done 3 now in case its not but I'm tempted to do the rest over the next 2 days as I change the water in the rest of the tanks.

 

[gwand]

Put RO water in it after thorough wash and incubation in Seachem Safe. Then test for chloride with a sensitive test strip.

 

[seangee]

Ah I suspect there is nothing to worry about. I'm pretty sure it will be fine without adding the safe. I added it anyway. The instructions on the jar say to use 1/4 teaspoon for 1250 litres of water. I used that amount for around 40 litres (the 10l containers hold a bit more than 10l) .

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Chlorine is a gas which evaporates. Let the bottle dry completely and the chlorines is gone.

Chloramine is chlorine and ammonia combined. Both are gasses. When they separate from sitting a while they both evaporate.

I have done RO/Di water for about 15 years. I store it in home depot 5 gal buckets and about 25 or gallon jugs which either come with distilled water, apple cider or bleach in them originally. Mine are always out of the light- filled or empty.

 

[Colin_T]

I rinse out my water bottles about 5 or 6 times after bleaching then fill them with tap water and let them stand overnight. After that I tip the water out and rinse a couple more times, then do a sniff test. If I smell bleach I rinse a few more times. If I don't smell bleach I use them again.

 

[MaloK]

Chlorine dissipates faster in air than in water.

 

[Colin_T]

soaking with water can help remove surfactants better than air drying (assuming there is surfactants in the bleach).

 

[TwoTankAmin]

The amount of surfactants in bleach or salt is so low it is not a danger. Before I migrated to using ammonium chloride for doing fishless cycles, I used regular old bleach that was unscented but which contained surfactants. In two instances where I was dosing ammonia to cycle a tank or to keep what I thought was an empty tank cycled, I discovered new fry. In both cases I unknowing had recently laid eggs in the tanks. I was adding ammonia every day or every other day because this was early on before fishless cyling ammonia additions became much more precise and less frequent.

When I spotted the fry swimming around, I stopped adding the ammonia. None of the babies died. Nor in those tanks which I cycled with household bleach had any issues once the fish were introduced. My way of doing the cycle with household ammonia involved doing a big water change when the cycle was complete and then adding carbon to the filter overnight before adding fish the next day.

Do a bit of research into the use of surfactants and you will see that the amount used in many cases, like in salt or bleach, is extremely small.

Myth 2​

Salt, sodium chloride, is hydroscopic - exposed to air of more than Sahara-at-midday humidity, it will pick up moisture from the air on the surfaces of the individual crystals, which melt at the surface and cement themselves together- in short, they clump. The salt shaker does not work with clumpy salt, so additives are used to block the clumping. Arrowroot is common for this purpose, but others are possible. Again, as with iodine, quantities are small (but larger than with iodide), and are food-safe and fish-safe.

Kosher salt is commonly suggested as an alternative to table salt, as it does not have iodide added. This of course is a response to salt myth #1. Others gasp in horror at this suggestion, as kosher salt may have yellow prussiate of soda (the sodium salt of prussic acid, a ferro- or ferricyanide) as its anti-caking agent. Horrors! That is a cyanide compound! You are sending your fish to the gas chamber and it will kill them instantly! Horsefeathers. Once again, the quantity is tiny, food-safe, and the fish would be pickled in brine long before potentially toxic levels could be reached. Salt urban myth #2 down.

from https://www.theaquariumwiki.com/wiki/The_Salt_of_the_Earth