# Vitamin C based dechlorination



## Maf 2500 (31 Mar 2021)

Hi, anyone have any experience of using ascorbic acid or any other form of Vitamin C for dechlorinating water for aquariums?

Just wondering if there are any side effects or other reason this hasn't been moved into the mainstream? Is it more expensive than the likes of Seachem Prime?

My research so far indicates it is effective for both chlorine and chloramine. The negative factor noted by some water companies is that ascorbic acid will lower the pH of the water a little. (Maybe a bonus for soft water fishkeepers?) If this is an issue sodium ascorbate can be used instead. Vitamin C based dechlorinators are said to have less effect on dissolved oxygen levels than sulphur based dechlorinators and are intrisically less toxic.

There was at least one small UK supplier last year that was selling a Vitamin C based dechlorinator for ponds but I didn't find it again in my (brief) search today. You can buy pure ascorbic acid powder for about £14 a kilo, but I don't know how cost effective that would be as I do not know how much I would need to dose in an aquarium situation.

From: Using Vitamin C to Neutralize Chlorine in Water Systems



> *Ascorbic Acid*
> One gram of ascorbic acid will neutralize 1 milligram per liter of chlorine per 100 gallons of water. The reaction is very fast. The chemical reaction (Tikkanen and others 2001) of ascorbic acid with chlorine is shown below:
> 
> 
> ...



Any thoughts?

(P.S. I did some research on this topic last year and then put it on the back burner and promptly forgot about it. There were a couple of recent topics on dechlorination that brought it back to mind so I thought I would ask the question... thanks for reading.)


(Apologies if there are existing threads on this subject, I did a search but nothing showed up.)


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## Wookii (31 Mar 2021)

I've never used it, but looking at the costs:

There are likely cheaper sources of ascorbic acid out there but Amazon seems to be around £15 for 1Kg, so using your dose of 1g per 100 gallons (presumably US), is 0.66p per 200 litres.

Seachem Safe is around £37 per kilo [Dose = 1.25g per 1250L), so around 0.74p per 200 litres.

Seachem Prime is around £32 for a litre [Dose = 5ml per 200L), so around 16.0p per 200 litres.

What I would want to know is whether the ascorbic acid is effective on heavy metals an ammonia? I think if you have a very large amounts of water to treat, then Seachem safe would be my choice (for purely irrational reasons of trust of the compound). For most aquaria though, the convenience of the liquid form, probably outweighs the additional cost.


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