Water Change - Best Way To Remove Chlorine Without Chemicals?

[loz_the_guru]

Im having to do an unexpected water change and wanted to know how long I should leave the water to stand before adding it? I usually leave it with an airstone in for 24 hours but due to some sick clown loaches i'd prefer not to leave it that long.

What sort of time span should I be looking at? Its been bubbling away now for the best part of 4 hours. Also, is it a good idea to add a little bit of boiling water from a kettle to it, mixing it up first in order to get the temperature closer to that of my tanks?

 

[Truck]

when you leave water to stand the chlorine is released into the air as it is isnt as dense as water thus floatiing but the toxic and harmful metals still remain. but if you are going to use this method make sure the water is in a container where there is a BIG surface area so the chlorine can be dispated into the air. but i strongly suggest you use an aloevera based dechlorinater.

by the way 24 hours is enough as long as the surface area is relativley good

 

[three-fingers]

Don't know how long chlorine usually takes to gass off, but most people seem to recommend 24 hours, with an airstone this will most likely be drastically reduced 4 hours will probably be fine, at least it will be at a much lower level, and will continue to gas off once added to the tank. Also the fact that any remaining chlorine will be diluted by the rest of the tank volume, so be harmful enough to advesly effect the clown loaches.

However, if your water company put cholramine in the water (and loads do), this will not remove that. I think I remember reading from a post by bignose that the filter bacteria in aquariums arable to process the ammonia part of chloramine, leaving chlorine to gas off, so you should be OK there. In anycase, loads of people don't even use dechlorinator.

If your doing a water change to reduce ammonia levels, not using treatment may be a bad idea.

aloevera based dechlorinater

Why? I've never even heard of such thing. There are some conditioners with Aloe vera in them, but are not Aloe vera based. Even having Aloe vera in them I'm very sceptical about - why would this be a good thing to put in a water conditioner?

 

[loz_the_guru]

Thanks for the replies guys, ive added around 75% of it throughout the course of the day and will add the rest in the morning

 

[Miss Wiggle]

the difficulty is chloramines, chloramine is a mixture of chlorine and ammonia which is put into some water sources, it doesn't gas off no matter how long you leave it to stand so you definately need to use a chemical dechlorinator if this is in your water. your water company will be able to tell you if it's in there or not.

 

[loz_the_guru]

Well the wonders of the internet never cease to amaze me, heres a detailed summary of my tap water:

ANALYSIS TYPICAL VALUE UK/EUROPEAN LIMIT UNITS
Hardness Level Moderately Soft No Standard Applies
Hardness Clark 4 No Standard Applies Degrees Clark
Hardness French 5.7 No Standard Applies French Degrees
Hardness German 3.2 No Standard Applies German Degrees
Aluminium 57.2 200 μgAl/l
Chloride 10.8 250 mgCl/l
Chlorine 0.26 No Standard Applies mg/l
Coliform bacteria 0 0 no./100ml
Colour 0.59 20 mg/l Pt/Co
Conductivity 145.2 2500 μS/cm at 20°C
E.coli bacteria 0 0 no./100ml
Fluoride 0.04 1.5 mgF/l
Iron 37.4 200 μgFe/l
Manganese 4.4 50 μgMn/l
Nitrate 3.4 50 mgNO3/l
Odour 0 3 at 25°C Dilution Number
Pesticides 0 0.5 μg/l
pH 7.79 6.5 - 10.0 pH Value
Sodium 7.2 200 mgNa/l
Taste 0 3 at 25°C Dilution Number
Plumbing Metals
Copper 0.01 2.0 mgCu/l
Lead 0.8 25 μgPb/l
Nickel 1 20 μgNi/l


Sorry its a bit jumbled, it didnt copy n paste very well. Given this info, can anyone give me some more precise advice?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

where did you get that list from? that looks like a generic list of min-max levels in UK tap water, not specific to your water company. I may have misunderstood though can you post the link to where you found that info?

 

[loz_the_guru]

Hi,
I got it from the severn trent water checker online.

Link:
http/www.stwater.co.uk/server.php?postco...rQualitySubmit=

It mentions my exact location so i'd guess its fairly precise....not 100% though

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with MW, you need to get the information directly from your own local water company (preferably over the phone or in person so you can be sure its up to date and not just some forgotten web page) and you need the to verify whether they use chlorine or chloramine as their method.

Only dechloramination chemicals will work if its chloramines, it won't gas off.

If it is indeed the older chorine method then you can gas it off. I've always left mine overnight back when I did that, but I'm pretty sure 12 hours would be ok and not a full 24 needed. If you have chlorine and want to use this method and have a small tank, simply refill some uncapped containers after your water change and leave them for next week!

Aloe additive type things, like API Stress Coat (I believe) and other dechlor products that have these extra additives should be seen as just having an "extra" feature. It has nothing to do with the declor/dechloram function and its very debatable whether its any good whatsoever for protecting the natural fish slime coat as its advertised to do - most hobbyists here have argued that it makes no difference and is just a sales gimick.

API Stress Coat however, happens to be an excellent dechlorination/dechloramination product, but is not as concentrated as Seachem Prime which is thus a cheaper (and better for that matter) product in my opinion. Pond dechlor products can be found that are even cheaper still and perfectly good for this function. So if you've got chloramines, then this is the info you need. (If only chlorines, then standing overnight is fine.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[rhostog]

It looks like Severn Trent currently add chlorine but not chloramine - difficult to be certain without knowing your exact location, but their general documentation seems to say this. (Or at least this was the situation when they last updated the documents on their website, but it could be up to a year out of date.)

So assuming this is still the case, your method of leaving the water to stand would be an effective way of removing the chlorine. However, adding a water treatment which removes chlorine would enable you to add the water straight away to your tank, without having buckets of water sitting around. Most of the treatments will do chloramine as well, so if your water company ever decides to start adding chloramine, you won't need to worry. If you carry on with your current method, it may be fine, but Severn Trent aren't obliged to inform you if one day they decide to start using chloramine.

A bottle of dechlorinating water treatment will last for ages - if you shop around as waterdrop suggests, it shouldn't cost much. I'd suggest it's worth considering, partly for the convenience of being able to add your fresh water immediately, and partly as insurance against chloramine.

The data you pasted is from a table which shows some of the chemicals tested for, followed by a 'typical' level in your local water, followed by the UK permitted limits - but this data doesn't normally show chloramine specifically, even if it's there. As you explained, the data lost its formatting when you pasted it, but it reads across each line: so for example, a 'typical' nitrate reading for your water would be 3.4, compared to the permitted limit of 50 mg/l.

Hope this helps - good luck with the poorly clown loaches.

 

[OldMan47]

If you are in a crisis situation and cannot wait to gas the chlorine and also have no dechlorinator, vitamin C will dechlorinate water. I don't recall the amounts involved but it doesn't take much to really knock down the chlorine. It is useless for chloramine but so is the 24 hour wait with an airstone.

 

[andywg]

Considering the research and real world experiences (including by members on this site) that dechlorination of water is not needed regardless of whether chlorine or chloramine is present, I would say that 4 hours with an airstone should be enough to see you through in a situation such as you describe.

 

[Rooster]

Why the reluctance to use a dechlor ?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

hopefully not mis interpreting andy, i'm sure he'll correct me if i have!

But I think what he's saying is we do know that the use of dechlor is not necessarily essential, there's some evidence to suggest that chlorine and chloramines do not nuke the bacteria as we thought. However it's cheap and easy so we may as well use it while we wait for more evidence to prove one way or another. However if you can't dechlorinate in your usual method for 1 water change then it's not it's cause for a major panic and things will most likely be fine.

 

[waterdrop]

hopefully not mis interpreting andy, i'm sure he'll correct me if i have!

But I think what he's saying is we do know that the use of dechlor is not necessarily essential, there's some evidence to suggest that chlorine and chloramines do not nuke the bacteria as we thought. However it's cheap and easy so we may as well use it while we wait for more evidence to prove one way or another. However if you can't dechlorinate in your usual method for 1 water change then it's not it's cause for a major panic and things will most likely be fine.

Yeah, I think its still a full-blown controversey as I seem to recall (Colin_T?) ..& some others saying they had experienced complete wipe-outs of bacteria in the past (maybe long ago) from surprise increases in chlorine/chloramine in their source water. I may be remembering it wrong.. I'm just pretty sure I've read some things like this from some of the experienced ones...

Without more controlled evidence I've adopted a middle-of-the-road feeling about it that perhaps many of the mature tanks with mature filters that have large established bacterial colonies just are not very effected by a fairly large water change with no conditioner. Maybe at times even larger water changes have been done with no harm. On the other hand, there do seem to have been reasonable reports of filter bacteria being completely wiped out by non-conditioned tap water cleans and water changes, which seems to be the other side of the story.

~~waterdrop~~