Ive run out of tap water conditioner!

[purplecatfish]

Auckland's water supply has fluoride added, (and sometimes aluminium sulphate, lime, caustic, iron and manganese) and conditioners do not claim to be able to remove this. I've been told that fluoride will evaporate in 24 hours if water is left to stand.

Sometimes water treatment plants clean their plant with chloramine which is extremely toxic to fish. There is an element of russian roulette in that if you happen to do a water change after they've cleaned the treatment plant and there happens to be too much residue washed into the system that happens to reach your house (which can be up to five days later), well...

The chlorine that they use to disinfect the water is supposed to be at a within the range of 0.3 to 1.5 mg/L but if you look at the annual reports then you can see that it has peaked at over 2.5 mg/L on rare ocassion.

(By the way the pH is supposed to be 7.5 to 8.5 except for Rodney where it can get to 9.5)

In my opinion you probably run more risk of killing your fish with natural pyrethrim in fly spray used at the other end of your house.

But I use conditioners and I won't even store fly spray in the house. (I also fill my tanks directly from the garden hose). As Discusguru said, how valuable are your fish? For most people, the money that they saved from not using conditioners could replace their guppies etc several times over.

[alanmin4304]

I think you will find that Auckland water has chlorine and not flouride. Chlorine is added as the gas or HTH which produces 80% of its weight in chlorine gas. Chlorine is used as a disinfectant and chlorination is required to get an AAA rating. Flouride is added as sodium flouride and is added to prevent tooth decay as flouride is low in NZ waters and it is required to build tooth enamel. Flouride is added to some water supplies but I don't think it is added to Auckland water.

[sub.z]

Can i see some pics Discusguru? Im guna get some discus later this year

[rnbo]

Fluoride is added to most Auckland water...not sure about peeps supplied from onehunga, there was a "thing" about that a year or two ago.

Water chlorinated also...

[purplecatfish]

I've just made a correction to my previous post. (My aged mind is forgetting the difference between chlorine, chloride, chloramide and chloramine). That'll teach me to rely on memory rather than check my facts before a rant.

By the way both Onehunga and Huia Village have fluoride free water. And Watercare make their own sodium hypochlorite on site (see your household bleach label)

[alanmin4304]

I have explained in a previous post how chlorine reacts to form chloramines. The water supply in Auckland will have a lot of organic content and therefore a lot of chloramines.They will not evaporate and neither will the flouride any more than salt will evaporate from the sea. It is not normally the reservoir that is sanitized but the water mains any time that repairs are carried out and it would normally be sanitized with chlorine (in the form of HTH)as it is a better disinfectant than chloramine.

[purplecatfish]

Hi alanmin4304, hope you can answer these two questions for us?

Can you please explain the term "HTH"?

If the Chlorine and Fluoride molecules don't evaporate why do some people age their water before adding it to their tanks instead of adding conditioners?

[alanmin4304]

HTH is high test hypochlorite which produces 80 odd % chlorine by weight when disolved in water and is the active ingredient used to chlorinate domestic swimming pools. It also has a slight buffering effect as chlorine lowers the pH. Chlorine is a highly toxic gas that disolves in water to form hypochlorus acid which is a very good disinfectant. Floride is an ion like chloride is in sea water and will not evaporate and is there to improve the enamel in the teeth like iodine is added to salt and they are considering adding folic acid to bread. The chlorine will dissapate particularly with ultraviolet light (hence the addition of other chemicals to mask UV in swimming pools. In a previous post I explained how chlorine reacts with the amino acids in proteins to form monochloramine then dichloramine then trichloramine before you can obtain free available chlorine. As the chlorine dissapates the balance of chloramines moves back towards the monochloramines and these are the chemicals that irritate the eyes and give the "chlorine" smell in a swimming pool. Chlorine will dissapate with aeration and UV light but I doubt that the chloramines would all break down in a couple of days. CHLORINE AND ALL THE CHLORAMINES ARE TOXIC TO FISH (THEY ARE DISINFECTANTS) and in my view should be neutalized before being added to a fish tank. Like filling half the tank with cold water and causing a 10 deg shock your fish may survive but I don't think it is ideal.

[alanmin4304]

Perhaps I wasn't clear above. Chlorine is an element and a gas. Flouride and chloride are ions. Chlorine reacts with water to form hypochlorus acid but is unstable and can break down and evaporate. Water has a condition called chlorine demand and this is the sum total of all the chemicals(including amines) that the chlorine will react with (it is a very strong oxidizing agent). Free available chlorine will not remain until all these reactions have taken place. The aim is to have a few ppm of chlorine as it is a better disinfectant than the rest. Ions will not evaporate, hence the concentration of chloride in the sea.

[purplecatfish]

How does this relate to aging water?

From what I understand, you're saying although the chlorine will evaporate there will still be some chloride remaining in chloramine form which should be removed by water conditioners.

[Ianab]

The formation of Chloramines would depend on the quality of the original water right? If it was pretty clean (very low Amino acids) then there would only be small amounts of chloramine forming?

The free chlorine will evaporate quickly, the chloride is a component of common salt - so trace levels of that is harmless, and there shouldn't be high amounts of chloramine there anyway.

I think thats why we can generally get away without 'ageing' water here in NZ. Tap water in other parts of the world may not be as good, and they NEED to add chemicals to break down the chloramines.

Cheers

Ian

[alanmin4304]

It is the various chloramines that will be left and are toxic to fish. I don't know but can guess that water from the Waikato river (with all the population on its banks probably discharging sewage and the farm waste entering the waterway) will have a considerable load of organic waste and therefore will create a lot of chloramines. It may be that your fish are surviving albeit with their gills partly burned. If it burns your eyes in a swimming pool chances are the fish would not be overjoyed by its presence. I wouldn't want to drink Waikato river water unclorinated. The water races in this area which originate from the Waimakiriri river have bacterial loadings that are in excess of the minimum treatment standards required by the Regional Council for septic tank discharges to groundwater (1000 faecal coliforms/100 mls of water and I would imagine the Waikato is similar. The Selwyn River is not fit to swim in let alone drink almost from its source to the sea. Clean/green NZ.

[purplecatfish]

The Waikato river only supplies 10% of Auckland's water and because of the new membrane filter they only have to put in 60 to 70% of the normal chlorine load to get it up to standard. Just remember that its not the source that counts its what's in the water after it leaves the bulk supply points (treatment plants).

Bacteria are easy to remove whereas heavy metals and pesticide residues are hard. In Waitakere we're lucky to have several lakes as our raw water supply that have no human activity around them. There is one that gets closed down because of algae blooms, not because of the bacteria, but because the toxins that they produce create an unpleasant flavour.

[davidb]

ha I just wrote an essay on that a few days ago purplecat

[jn]

I'm not up to commenting on the chemistry but just to get back to the water conditioner I just thought I'd pass on the experience of a someone known to me back in Canada.

This person had a tank full of very expensive fish and did his normal water changes with water straight from the tap. One unfortunate day his fish all died within 10 mins of his water change. He ran off some more water and realised it smelled very stongly of chlorine. Contacted the local water authorities who confirmed there had been some trouble at a nearby pumping station and yes they had been required to dose it with chlorine. I think is was like $500 worth of fish.

So as someone else said.. it depends on whether someone wants to take the risk that what's coming out of the tap is good enough on any particular day.

(Does aeration of the water have any effect on Chloramines or do they need to be 'bound out' by other chemicals explicitly? I'm on bore water.. so just curious?)

[Ianab]

Yes, that extra dose of chlorine can happen if there are problems with the treatment plant. If for some reason the filters are out of action they can step up the chlorine dose to at least sterilise the crud going to the taps. It smells and tastes horrible, but wont kill humans (which is the main concern). It can kill fish though.

Be very carefull with your tap water during bad weather, power outages or any time the local council advises that there are water problems. I fill from a bucket and have a look / sniff of the water as I fill it. If it had a chlorine smell - no water change today.

Cheers

Ian

[alanmin4304]

When taking a water sample from a chlorinated water supply for bacterial analysis the sterile bottles normally contain a crystal of sodium thiosulphate which imediately neutralizes the disinfection effects of the chlorine and its products so that any still viable bacteria can be cultured in the lab. This is the ingredient in the water conditioner. I note what has been said about the pristene water supply of the greater Auckland region but any water drawn from an open water course, catchment or lake is likely to contain a reasonable amount of organic matter and therefore to produce chloramines which can realy only be got rid of with water conditioner.