amtiskaw Posted February 5, 2012 Report Share Posted February 5, 2012 During water changes, is it safe to just add dechlorinator to a tank then fill up with tap water? :dunno: Up till now I've been filling a barrel, adding dechlorinator then pumping the water into the tank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Li@m Posted February 5, 2012 Report Share Posted February 5, 2012 Yep Perfectly fine, I do it. Maybe pour half of the de-chlorinator in the barrel and half in the tank and then fill up the tank? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cricketman Posted February 5, 2012 Report Share Posted February 5, 2012 horses for courses, you're going to get several different renditions... I say that as long as the de-chlorinator gets in there at some point, your good... before, after, in tank, out of tank, during, half and half....it won't make that much difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fishy-fish Posted February 5, 2012 Report Share Posted February 5, 2012 In summer, I do 50% water changes weekly, siphoning out into 20L buckets (which go on the garden) then I fill up with the garden hose - no dechlorinator - I don't add anything. The water temp drops from 27 down to 23 but rises back to 27 within an hour or so. I use to be fussy with water changes, adding stress zyme and getting the water temp just right, but I have found all this extra effort to be unnecessary. Lugging 20L buckets of water around gets tedious quickly! Winter is a different story as the water temp out of the tap or hose is a few degrees colder. Because of this, I reduce my water changes to around 30% and increase their frequency. Oh, by the way, I keep africans and they are known to be hardy especially with temp changes so maybe not recommended on other fish families/species and I have yet to have a disease or stress related death. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henward Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 I have a 200 litre drum that feeds pure tap water, untreated, unaerated directly into my 1200LItre and my 600litre. i have been doing this for 3 years now, maybe more. i first tried it out with one tank and no adverse effect. My resevoir is the okura resevoir by east coast road, best check 'watercare' for the test specs on your supply, they will have it availab eand do regular tests, you can see that water is usually very good, but if you are from rural perhaps its different. maybe try a small tank - with some tetras, goldfish, bns, and use pure tap water direct..... i bet you will be pleasantly suprised that you can save money on water agers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amtiskaw Posted February 7, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 I'm not worried about the cost of dechlor - it's pretty cheap when you don't have raging MTS - so I'm going to try adding the dechlor to the tank before topping up. Thanks for all the replies Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrahamC Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 Water varies around the country and even in the same district with some plants adding chlorine and others not. It is said that if you add 10% water, then even if chlorinated, it doesn't matter. What you are trying to avoid is to knock off your biological filter. In Wgton the water stinks of chlorine where I am. I leave it for 24 hours until the chlorine smell goes and then use it. If I don't have the luxury of leaving it, I use a dechlorinator. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanmin4304 Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 What about the chloramines that remain. As the chlorine evapourates off the equiliblrium moves towards monochloramine which is the worst for your fish and is even used to disinfect water supplies in some states in the US. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrahamC Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 I would deduce that the amount of organic chloramines that do form when chlorine reacts with proteins and amino acids are not significant enough to disturb the biological filter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanmin4304 Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 What about the fish's gills being treated with chloramines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrahamC Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 I'm not aware that chloramine does anything to fish gills, even if our water supply has any measurable amounts. What is the issue that we need to be concerned with? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanmin4304 Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 If it puts a kink in a bacterium it must not be the favourite thing for the gills of a fish. Monochloramine is not as good a disinfectant as chlorine but it must be pretty good at killing things including gills. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrahamC Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 Fortunately we have no evidence it does any such thing. It does however pass thru gills and combine with haemoglobin forming small amounts of methaemoglobin. the ‘Estimated No-Effects Value’ (ENEV) for chloramine is 0.0056 mg/L for freshwater organisms and 0.0028 mg/L for marine and estuarine organisms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanmin4304 Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 The chlorine demand on water from open catchments, rivers etc can be quite high and most of that demand would end up as chloramines. The ENEV amounts you quote are extremely small and way, way below what I would expect in most of our chlorinated water supplies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrahamC Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 Do you have any figures on how much chloramine is created in our water supply then? And I note a reference to the US considering the use of Chloramine-T in fish hatcheries to control bacterial gill diseases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanmin4304 Posted February 8, 2012 Report Share Posted February 8, 2012 I have no figures and the amount would vary a lot depending on what the organic chlorine demand was in the water. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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