Water changes

[Aquarium Dude]

If there is no chlorine in our tap water can I just put water straight from the tap in the tank when doing water changes?, or do I need an aging bin?

[bdspider]

Just put it straight in. Christchurch water makes fish keeping so much easier

[Lady-Lene]

Really?? You lucky people! I'm so jealous

[HummingBird]

I use water straight from the hose to do my water changes. Chlorine evaporates really, really quickly. It's not really an issue at all - only chloramine is, which we don't get here anyways.

[HaNs]

It's not really an issue at all - only chloramine is, which we don't get here anyways.

Where is here? NZ as a whole? I need to find a easy solution to doing 200L a week in a watering can and is going to increase with my new tanks.

[Caryl]

As a whole.

[alanmin4304]

Chlorine reacts with the amines in the water to form monochloramine, then with more chlorine to form dichloramine, then with more chlorine to form trichloramine. The monochloramine is what irritates your eyes in a swimming pool and the solution is to add more chlorine. All proteins are a string of phosphates with amino acids (amines) hanging off them and amines are generally available in the watersupply so it will have chloramines if it is chlorinated. As the chlorine disapates the equilibrium moves back towards the monocloramines. Christchurch water has no chlorine so no water treatment is required. It has more dissolved gasses than in your aqarium because it is under pressure in the mains and it pays to add water at a similar temperatur to what you have removed.

[Tom Gunner]

How do you find out if your locl water supply has Chlorine added or not?

[HummingBird]

Chlorine reacts with the amines in the water to form monochloramine, then with more chlorine to form dichloramine, then with more chlorine to form trichloramine. The monochloramine is what irritates your eyes in a swimming pool and the solution is to add more chlorine. All proteins are a string of phosphates with amino acids (amines) hanging off them and amines are generally available in the watersupply so it will have chloramines if it is chlorinated. As the chlorine disapates the equilibrium moves back towards the monocloramines. Christchurch water has no chlorine so no water treatment is required. It has more dissolved gasses than in your aqarium because it is under pressure in the mains and it pays to add water at a similar temperatur to what you have removed.

Everything you've said is very cerebral alanmin, but you failed to mention how quickly chlorine "disapates", which is what this was about anyways. All I know is that I do my water changes straight from the hose and my fish, plants and aquarium in general are thriving, so I guess chlorine dissipates fast enough.

[Ianab]

How do you find out if your locl water supply has Chlorine added or not?

Generally you can assume your tap water has been chlorinated.. the amount varies, usually depending on the quality of the original water supply and how the water treatmant plant is being operated. Sometimes the water will be heavily chlorinated and you can actually smell it at the tap. You definately want to treat that water, or at least let it sit for a while. If everything is running smoothly most of it will be gone from the water by the time it reaches you.

Christchurch is a special case, because their water comes from bores where the water has been naturally filtered through the sand and gravel. It's very clean and doesn't need extra treatment to make it safe to drink.

Most city supplies come from a local river or lake and gets filtered and chlorinated to remove the duck crap etc :-?

Cheers

Ian

[herefishiefishie]

If you have just chlorine, you can run your water through a shower head, that will disperse the chlorine.

If not be careful, I believe fish can handle about 30% water change with chlorine water. Then again the text I read that from. Wonder what chlorine levels they were on about. Here on the Gold Coast the water stinks of chlorine

Any level of chloramines is lethal. Contact your local council, they will have the answers for you.

Frenchy

[alanmin4304]

Sorry to be cerabral. I was actually trying to be factual. Perhaps I should re explain with words of one syllable.

1. All chlorinated water supplies contain chloramines

2. Chloramines are disinfectants.

3 free available chlorine is a disinfectant

4 Chlorine will disapate and chloramines will not.

5 Chlorine and chloramines are toxic to fish

6 Christchurch water comes from the second or third (of 4) artesian layers and contains no chlorine or chloramines and therefore requires no pretreatment.

I think people sometimes become confused because they think Mrs Google is God's Mother in Law and they find info about using chloramines to disinfect water supplies. .

Particularly in the USA chloramines are used to disinfect water supplies because many of the water supplies contain chemical contaminants that react with chlorine (a strong oxidising agent) to form a number of rather nasty compounds as well as chloramines and so they use chloramines rather than chlorine. In NZ we use chlorine which is actually a better disinfectant.

What you smell in the shower or the swimming pool is chloramines not chlorine and the more the chlorine disapates, the more you will smell it. The way to get rid of the smell is to add more chlorine. It is the monochloramine that irritates your eyes.

[HummingBird]

You can be both simultaneously, you know. A joke about expressing yourself monosyllabically? Gosh, how original. So how quickly will chloramines dissipate with aeration? (which is what I was asking before) My point was that regardless of how much chloramine creates itself in the water supply, it obviously (and I say obviously because everyone I know who uses tapwater doesn't have dead fish) does so quickly enough to be harmless.

[alanmin4304]

Chlorine gas either injected or by adding HTH solution reacts with the water and forms hypochlorous acid and will dissipate with aeration and also with UV light (swimming pools). I don't think chloramines dissapate that way but will react with other things (chemicals, bacteria etc) to form complexes and will therefore get changed to a different form.

[alanmin4304]

I understand that chlorine and chloramines damage the gills of fish. The treatment is usually sodium thiosulphate I think. Perhaps you have been lucky.

[Caryl]

I know a godlfish breeder in Auckland who never used additives to get rid of chlorine. I saw him fill a tank from a hose (and I could smell the chlorine) then dump the fish in it. He said he didn't have time to muck around with water and the fish would have to get used to it

Seems they did though as all his fish were huge and healthy.

We do not have chlorine added to our water either so can use it straight from the tap.

I understood there was a difference when speaking about chloramines in the water, as a result of added chlorine, and other chloramines actually added to the water supply. Overseas it seems they add both to the water supply.

[alanmin4304]

In NZ we add chlorine until all the chloramines are formed and pushed to trichloramine which leaves free available chlorine and trichloramines until the chlorine disapates and the equation moves back towards monochloramine. In the USA they add mono chloramine to avoid the other compounds formed when chlorine reacts with contaminants to form nasties, so they have no chlorine.

[Tom Gunner]

alanmin4304 - Thankyou for taking the time to explain as simply as you can the chemistry aspect of chlorine relationship within water. I think this is a great science lesson and helps us to understand the breakdown of our weekly water changes.

Personally I think you should compile this information and place it as a sticky post for everyone to read.

Cheers, Chris.

[alanmin4304]

Thanks--- I hope it wasn't too cerebral

[Tom Gunner]

Not at all - I know who I'll be asking for my chemisty questions.

[herefishiefishie]

Yep I agree, very well written. As for the smell of the chlorine here it was only when I first came here, my first shower I went phewww.{The smell of the water, not my reflection }

From what I have been told, chlorine is in the Gold Coast water, chloramine in Brissie. The problem here is the qualityespecially in Brissie, bit of a drought problem here. One of Brissies dams has been cut off from the water supply, water to poor a quality, water level is at about 11% :oops:

Level 5 water restrictions.

Gold Coast dam is 68%, not a very big dam though.

Frenchy