Water conditioner for small tanks

[Wills]

API Tap Water Conditioner. The dose rate is 1 drop per 3.8 litres. The 30 ml bottle has a dropper lid and the larger bottles have measuring cup lids. I bought a 30 ml bottle, then when that ran out I got a more cost effective bigger bottle and refill the smaller bottle from that.


Image from API's website
View attachment 162629

Wow this thread took off in a far more interesting way than I expected! But this is exactly what I want, the little dropper is exactly what I need.

Wills

 

[Slaphppy7]

Wow this thread took off in a far more interesting way than I expected! But this is exactly what I want, the little dropper is exactly what I need.

Wills

Sorry for the tangents, my friend

 

[Oblio]

So, theoretically, I could treat a 10G tank with 1 ml of Prime, have it frozen solid within an hour, and when thawed, say in an hour, Prime would still render any ammonia inert for 22 more hours?

Or would ammonia be present in ANY form, after freezing?

Possibly
The engineer (Caveat - Electrical, not Chemical) in me thinks that when frozen the molecules are no longer able to mix and combine, disassociate, recombine - This is why most chemical reactions are with liquids or gases. The easy way to tell would be to test with a small (e.g. 100 ml) volume of water. Treat, test, freeze, thaw, test.

 

[Colin_T]

"I keep the diluted stuff in the freezer and take it out for an hour or so before I need it."

THIS is what I'm wondering....does frozen, treated tap water retain the same chemical properties as the time it was frozen, when thawed?

I would keep water conditioners/ dechlorinators in the fridge, preferably on the bottom shelf or vege crisper and away from the back of the fridge if you have an auto defrost fridge.

Freezing can mess up chemicals and heat from auto defrost fridges and freezers can too.

 

[itiwhetu]

API Tap Water Conditioner. The dose rate is 1 drop per 3.8 litres. The 30 ml bottle has a dropper lid and the larger bottles have measuring cup lids. I bought a 30 ml bottle, then when that ran out I got a more cost effective bigger bottle and refill the smaller bottle from that.


Image from API's website
View attachment 162629

How big is a drop, surely ever drop is a different volume?

 

[itiwhetu]

I love this, another thread exposing the misuse of dechlorinator

 

[Lajos_Detari]

Does the 1 drop per 3.8 litres treat the Chlorine or both Chlorine and Chloramines?

According to the instruction on the bottle, the direction of use:
To remove Chlorine, add 1ml for each 20 U.S gallons(76 liter).

To detoxify Chloramines, add 5ml for each 30 U.S gallons(114liter).
It means, 1ml for 6 U.S gallons(22.8 liters).

Since my tap water has Chloramines, I will use 1ml for 22.8 liters.

 

[itiwhetu]

How big is a drop?

 

[Lajos_Detari]

How big is a drop?

I guess we have to wait for Essjay.

 

[itiwhetu]

I guess we have to wait for Essjay.

A drop is a dumb measurement and means nothing.

 

[Lajos_Detari]

A drop is a dumb measurement and means nothing.

I guess she is using a special dropper or those dropper that can hold up to 1ml of liquid.

 

[Colin_T]

Most fish medication bottles and dechlorinator bottles have the same size outlet for the liquid to come out of. Therefore a drop coming out of these bottles is 1 drop when the bottle is held upside down and the liquid drips out 1 time as a droplet.

Happy now?

 

[Essjay]

I was assuming Wills had chlorine rather than chloramine as he's in the UK. But yes, if the water provider uses chloramine, the dose is increased. API Tap Water Conditioner does not contain anything to detoxify ammonia either, so it's good for chlorine, but not quite as good for chloramine.

Drop size. I have ocular hypertension and I use eye drops every night to hopefully stop it progressing to glaucoma. If using drops from a dropper bottle is good enough for a medication, using drops from a bottle made by the manufacturer is good enough for a dechlorinator in my opinion. It's probably more accurate than measuring 1 gallon water into a bucket. How many of have measuring equipment capable of accurately measuring 1 gallon, or even 1 litre.

I have 2 measuring jugs of the same make, a 250 ml and a 500 ml. I just tested them by weighing the amount of water they hold. Filling the smaller jug to the line holds 236 g water. Filling the larger one to the line holds 500 g water. That suggests the larger jug is accurate but the smaller one is not - 250 ml water should weigh 250 g not 236. But how accurately are the kitchen scales calibrated?
My bucket has litres marked on the inside. Can I trust those markings to be accurate? And my sink slopes slightly towards the drainage hole, so the angle of the bucket will make a difference.

Unless we all have laboratory grade measuring equipment, using drops from a bottle with a dropper lid added to a bucket of water with the volume marked on the side of the bucket is accurate enough.

What about those water conditioners which say to add half a capful per 10 gallons. That's even less accurate.

 

[GaryE]

Interesting thread. The one drop per gallon dechlorinator I used for ages was discontinued 20 years ago, and I simply stopped dechlorinating for any water change below 30%. I was dealing was simple chlorine, and not chloramines. I bred 200 species of fish in that time, and all my fish were very long lived, so it was not a problem.

It worked just fine, but after I moved this city seems to go chlorine happy on an irregular basis. For those days (once or twice a month) when a swimming pool comes out of my tap, I decided to listen to people here and buy myself my first ever, 55 years into the hobby Prime bottle. My plan was to use it for one species that would not lay eggs fpr 4 or 5 days after water changes, in case that was the chlorine that didn't gas off, and to treat all tanks on the bad days.

It is a pain in the water butt to portion out given that I have small (10 and 20 gallon mainly) tanks. I can't seem to get the API product here, without an international order, and am stuck with the Seachem product. If I were to go over to using a dropper, what would you suggest for dosages, in US gallons, so I can waste less and put less of this into my water?

 

[Essjay]

It will depend on just how much chlorine is in the water on water change day. If it varies, a set dose won't be good enough as you could end up adding insufficient on high chlorine days or too much on low chlorine days. Do you have any data on the maximum and minimum levels?


The dose rate on Seachem's website is 5 ml for 50 gallons/200 litres (though 50 gallons = 189 litres so they've rounded it up). That's 1 ml in 10 gallons/40 litres. You would need to experiment to see how many drops from your dropper = 1 ml, then work out how many drops for the volume you would be using.