Dechlorinator On Water Change

[ATK!!!]

What about all the nasties in your water tank that you get the hot water from? Surely they're in pretty high concentrations, and how long would it take for chlorine to harm the fish anyway. Surely they would need far less of it for far less time than what is needed for a human... And dechlorinator can't get rid of everything can it, so what about the bad stuff left behind? I know that many people use this method and have no problems but I just don't understand how it could all be ok

 

[StandbySetting]

There are no nasties in hot water supplies unless your supply is contaminated, a few heavy metals maybe, but they're in nearly everyones supply and aren't anything to worry about, the chlorine gasses of pretty quickly and is diluted anyway, the average free chlorine concentration in my tap water is 0.300Mg/L so a 25% water change will be adding 0.075Mg/L of free Chlorine, for the most sensitive of fish harmful levels are at about 0.050Mg/L, so yes there is a slight danger, but most of the chlorine that is in my tap water will have exited the water before it enters the tank, so no immediate danger to fish or filter bacteria.

 

[This Old Spouse]

Is there a chlorine/chloramine test you recommend?

 

[StandbySetting]

There's no need to test, your water company should give you a run down of average concentrations of additives on their website.

 

[fluttermoth]

I agree there just aren't any 'nasties' in most peoples hot water tanks.

I don't have a mixer tap anyway, so I just use straight from the cold tap; I do 50% changes; I just don't feel the need to rush and I trickle the water in very slowly; if I'm not lugging buckets I don't care if my changes take an hour or more.

I've been doing it this way for a couple of years now and have never had a problem.

You know; I never used to be able to keep houseplants, and my friend, who's an expert gardener, told me I 'worried them to death' by fussing over every little thing; I wonder if this is true of some newbie fishkeepers too?

You're all fussing and stressing over every little change, whereas us, more experienced keepers are quite happy pouring gallons of cold tap water in our tanks! I do use dechlor but I know some people who don't and they're perfectly successful.

I personally, think big, regular water changes are the absolute key to keeping fish. Once you get over the, "oh but big/too many water changes stress out the fish/unbalance the tank/filter, you must exactly hardness/pH/temp match every drop of water that goes near your tank" and just do those changes, I think a lot of people (and fish, lol) would be much happier!

As always, YMMV and all that...I'm speaking only from personal experience and don't have scientific papers at hand to back up what I've said; I still stand by it though!

 

[This Old Spouse]

There's no need to test, your water company should give you a run down of average concentrations of additives on their website.

Website? Nope. Can't even pay my bill with anything but cash or check!

You know; I never used to be able to keep houseplants, and my friend, who's an expert gardener, told me I 'worried them to death' by fussing over every little thing; I wonder if this is true of some newbie fishkeepers too?

I do keep great houseplants. And you know what my secret is? Old tank water!!!!

 

[chrisso]

What about all the nasties in your water tank that you get the hot water from? Surely they're in pretty high concentrations, and how long would it take for chlorine to harm the fish anyway. Surely they would need far less of it for far less time than what is needed for a human... And dechlorinator can't get rid of everything can it, so what about the bad stuff left behind? I know that many people use this method and have no problems but I just don't understand how it could all be ok

I have heard of people putting copper coins in tanks to stop white spot, im pretty sure water heaters use copper so i would assume the water coming from the heater would be free of disease?

 

[Stephan]

Yeah no matter what ppl say I'm prob still only gonna dose for what I replace. Is anyone with me on saying this is sufficient?

Any nasties in ur hot water tank would still be there if u put it in a bucket first. So that is a moot point.

I am under the impression the danger of chlorine may have more to do with killing bacteria than anything else.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Yeah no matter what ppl say I'm prob still only gonna dose for what I replace. Is anyone with me on saying this is sufficient?

Any nasties in ur hot water tank would still be there if u put it in a bucket first. So that is a moot point.

I am under the impression the danger of chlorine may have more to do with killing bacteria than anything else.

This is only sufficient IF you dose the dechlorinator to a bucket separate from the tank before you add it to the tank. If you are going to dose the dechlorinator directly to the tank, do so at your own peril, it would be akin to adding tap water directly to the tank without adding any dechlorinator (which some folks do, reportedly with no ill effects, but I err on the side of caution - not quite as much as TYS or TOS, but I still use dechlorinator).

 

[Stephan]

I'm still stuck on the idea that water has a certain amount of chlorine. If I mix 15 gallons of Chlorinated water with 40 gallons of dechlorinated water, I now have 55 gallons of chlorinated water but chlorinated at a much lower concentration.

Example above: tap water is .300mg/l

I'll say a gallon is 4liters. Close enough. So that is 1.2 mg/gallon

If I'm adding 15 gallons I'm adding 18 mg of chlorine.

If 5ml of my dechlorinator can treat 10 gallons of water, then 7.5 can treat 15 gallons.

Reason tells me that 7.5 ml of dechlor is strong enough to remove 18mg of chlorine. Why then should it matter if that 18 mg of chlorine is spread out among 15 gallons or 55?

Has anyone actually tested this? Or is everyone just dosing for the whole tank BC that's what everyone else is saying? I mean I could be wrong about how it works, but otherwise my logic seems to hold up.

 

[Tolak]

The suggestion for dechlorinating the entire tank volume due to dechlorinator being oxidized by remaining waste products in the tank is information from Seachem, the folks that make Prime; http/www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Prime.html

"If adding directly to aquarium, base dose on aquarium volume."

Also; http/www.seachem.com/support/forums/showthread.php?t=896

As far as not using any dechlorinator for water changes of 25% or less we have this; http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/161413-water-changes/

Most of my tanks are drilled with overflows for water changes. Untreated tap water goes in at generally the same temperature timed out at GPM for the water change. Once the overflow is done removing water I dose with Prime for the full tank volume. Usually I do 50% water changes, give or take.

These tanks all have mature filters that have been running for years, this isn't something I'd try with a newly cycled filter.

 

[StandbySetting]

Yeah no matter what ppl say I'm prob still only gonna dose for what I replace. Is anyone with me on saying this is sufficient?

Any nasties in ur hot water tank would still be there if u put it in a bucket first. So that is a moot point.

I am under the impression the danger of chlorine may have more to do with killing bacteria than anything else.

Any effect tap water has on filter bacteria is negligible on a mature set up, the quantities of chlorine in tap water is there to kill bacterial colonies that are many orders of magnitude smaller than the colonies present in our filters.

 

[Stephan]

In the seachem thread the tech support person said that if chlorine/chloramine are ur only issues with daily water changes u can dose only what is being changed. So apparently the other interaction is only if u don't change often.

I also find it interesting that it says it treats 5mg/l chlorine at recommended dose level. So I guess if my chlorine levels are lower (and they should be according to the city) then I can reduce my dose by a significant amount!

 

[Tolak]

Yes, if you are changing a lot of water the likelihood of organic compounds being in the tank are less. You are also referring in that topic to a 10% daily water change, in your tank you are planning on around a 25% water change. Generally with an auto water change system, as is mentioned in the third post of that topic, carbon block filtration is used on the incoming water, so dechlorinator is not needed. This is generally set up for very large tanks, or many smaller tanks.

If you trust your water supplier that much go for it; most don't. Do your research on them, and have a backup plan. Find your water source, and what conditions will cause them to add more disinfectants and such. You'll probably find situations where they add less. The biggest concern of municipal water suppliers is providing a safe product for human consumption; they could care less about your fish.

The problem is not the dilution of disinfectants, it's the dechlorinator being used up by organic compounds in the tank along with the disinfectants added to the water. If you have any sort of substrate you have plenty of these.

 

[ATK!!!]

So would the dechlorinator actually effect your substrate's life span? (Say you had a special plant substrate that contains macro and micro trace elements)

So it would be ok not to temp match on a 30% water change on a 180l tank (sry dont know it in gallons) I would have thought that it would significantly lower the temperature seeing as my cold water tap comes out at 13c...