Dechlorinator - How Much Do I Add?

[jenny6165]

i bought some dechlorinator today for my water changes. it says to obv add it to the new water i am going to add to the tank, but i change my water with a big cooking pot, and use about 8 pots full of water to do the change. it says on the label to do 1ml per 20 US gallons. so how do i work out how much dechlorinator to add to each pot? cos 1ml is hardly anything

 

[CruX]

i bought some dechlorinator today for my water changes. it says to obv add it to the new water i am going to add to the tank, but i change my water with a big cooking pot, and use about 8 pots full of water to do the change. it says on the label to do 1ml per 20 US gallons. so how do i work out how much dechlorinator to add to each pot? cos 1ml is hardly anything

Is it not 10mls? My dechlorinator is 5mls per 10L of water.

 

[Cheffi]

A lot of people use pond dechlorinators where you are using around 5ml for a 75 litre water change.

Why don't you try taking out the water with a measuring jug, keeping a count of how many litres you remove, chucking them into a bucket. Then you'll know how much dechlor to put back in the fresh water.

 

[Bignose]

Also note that almost any dechlorinater is safe for the fish up through a several-fold overdose. There was a thread some time ago wherein the forum member wrote to Tetra and asked how high of an overdose was possible. Tetra wrote back that you can put a whole bottle in most tanks and the fish wouldn't die off. I would bet Tetra meant like 20 gal or so, a while bottle in a 1 gal wouldn't leave much room for water! But the point is that, you can use quite a lot of dechlorinator without worry about killing the fish. I think that if you look through some of the older threads about this, a large number of long-time fishkeepers don't even bother rmeasuring. I haven't for several years now.

 

[Cheffi]

To be honest now I don't measure exactly as I don't always remove the same amount of water every time. It is correct that you would have to dump in loads of dechlor to overdose and even then there probably wouldn't be any bad effects. However dechlors cost money and we're all into saving the pennies so providing you're estimate is close you'll be fine.

 

[jenny6165]

ah ok.
so would a few drops per cookin pot be ok?
is there a certain amount u need to put in for it to take effect?

im rubbish at measurments and dont even know how much a gallon is.

the bottle definetely says 1ml.


its called API tap water conditioner, aquarium dechlorinator.

 

[SugarQube]

can't you buy just a cheap bucket ? fill your pots and tip into the bucket you will always know how much water then. I use the API and in 18L think it is one and half ml it does seem a tiny amount

 

[vic]

I would suggest that a much more serious issue is whether or not your dechlorination chemical reacts with both chlorine and chloramine to neutralize the chlorine and chloramine. There are number of declor products on the market that do NOT react with chloramine to neutralize the chloramine. There are getting to be a lot of water treatment systems that are driven by chloramine as this treatment process is substantially cheaper than the chlorine treatment process.
Cheers;

 

[Tolak]

I have a ml dropper, 1 ml is 20 drops. I use Prime, a common dechlorinator used at the rate of 1 ml per 10 gallons, and double dose when water conditions are bad. One gallon is equal to 4.5 liters.

Any dechlorinator I can think of will remove chlorine & chloramine. the problem is the resulting ammonia from chloramine. If you have water treated with chloramine, use a water treatment that also deals with ammonia.

 

[Cheffi]

As Sugarcube says buy a cheap bucket and use just for your fish. You could have issues using cooking pots and dunking them in your tank. You never know what you're putting in plus I try to keep all metals out of my tank.

 

[jenny6165]

well i did a water change this morning before reading this post,. and added a tiny amount of the stuff into each pot of water i did.
was i meant to leave it a little while to work before putting it into the tank? cos i just swished it round and then put it in my tank.
ive just done a water test and my nitrites have gone down to 0, which is good.

 

[Cheffi]

well i did a water change this morning before reading this post,. and added a tiny amount of the stuff into each pot of water i did.
was i meant to leave it a little while to work before putting it into the tank? cos i just swished it round and then put it in my tank.
ive just done a water test and my nitrites have gone down to 0, which is good.

It isn't necessary to leave your water before you add it to your tank. I throw my dechlor in as the new water is going in as I use a syphon.
I'm a little concerned where you say you had nitrites before your water change. You shouldn't have any nitrites unless you are cycling it?

 

[Shaker]

The API dechlorinator I use ( Stress Coat ) is probably the same as yours Jenny, I use 2.5 ml per 10 litre bucket. I used to use alot more ( fear of not adding enough ) but it's so expensive at £12 per bottle.

I know I use 2.5 ml because it's the small end of 1 of those medicine spoons we use to give the Kiddies their Calpol