Dechlorinated Water And Tap Water...

[mydnight]

Am going to be starting a fishless cycle soon, but if I start the cycle with tap water will this be okay or should I use dechlorinated water? If decholorinated how do I do it, what's the best products to buy and bear in mind I live in the UK.

In case you need to know it's a 17.6g tank

 

[andywg]

New tanks are best off with dechlorinated water. Just head to any pond store and get a pond dechlorinator, or else look for seachem's prime. These last longer than most aquarium dechlors.

 

[Luketendo]

Use dechlorinated water because otherwise bacteria will not grow as chlorine is toxic to them. I use Tetra Aqua Safe myself.

 

[SJ2K]

+1 Seachems prime, its easy to use, the instructions on the bottle will explain it all in my case, i use 10l buckets so i only need 1 thread on the cap of dechlor to treat 1 bucket of water

 

[Luketendo]

Then again next time I might go with prime as I just worked out 6 quid worth would last me 4 years on average (doing 20L per week.)

 

[andywg]

Use dechlorinated water because otherwise bacteria will not grow as chlorine is toxic to them. I use Tetra Aqua Safe myself.

Where do you think the bacteria in our tanks actually come from in the first place? That's right, the tap. Also, chlorination in water plants is designed to deal with a far lower population than we harbour on our filter bacteria, so the chlorine cannot do much more than a dent in the population.

Then there is the fact that recent research suggests that the bacteria in our tanks can actually live off of chloramine and one can really start to look at how necessary dechlors are. I am fairly sure that OohFeeshy is over 6 months into not using dechlor without issue, and I know some other people don't use it either.

 

[Luketendo]

Oops my bad I thought It just grew.

 

[mydnight]

Some interesting points there! Has anyone else got any ideas?

I did a little bit of chemistry at school and I know that pure chlorine will explode if you put it in water lol (same with fluorine, bromine etc) can remember doing test in the lab on this group (group 7 I believe off the top of my head). Obviously it's hugely diluted for swimming pools and drinking water...