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Any point in treating water?

NC10

NC10

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Joined
20 Nov 2013
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Sheffield
I've just done another 10% water change and it got me thinking 🙄

Is there any point in treating tap water on a small water change like this?

My system is 308 litres, meaning a 10% change is 30.8 litres. 30 litres of water with traces of chlorine in surely can't be that bad when adding to the other 278 litres.

I suppose that's irrelevant really as 10% is 10% regardless of how many litres it is, but what I'd like to know so I can work it out exactly, is what percentage of tap water is chlorine and at what percentage would fish actually start to notice it?
 
I was reading a thread the other day (I can't even remember if it was on this forum) which discussed the varying quality of tap water. Normally it might be ok, but under certain circumstances the water authorities can increase the amounts of chemicals they put in the water without telling you.... leading to the death of all your stock. Sorry about the vagueness of my answer, I'll have a look for the thread.

EDIT: I can't find the one I was looking for but this pretty much covers it
 
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Cheers for the reply @James D

So going by that, the question I should probably be asking is what is the maximum the water companies can put in and base my calculations around that. There must be a safe limit or something that they have to work to,
 
That's the fella. I wouldn't risk it for the price of a bottle of Aqua Safe.
 
I have 5 years of doing water changes directly from the tap, percentage is 30%-40%.
No problems (so far).

This is about the risk you are willing to take with regards to your animal stock. I can say that in my experience, chlorine has no effect for wc of 30%-40%, aquariums over 50 liters.

Chloramine and aluminium sulphate are different issues, they will most likely kill everything, but I was lucky.

safest solution: sterasyl filter mounted after tap for removing aluminium sulphate and activated carbon filter for removing chloramine.
 
Cheers @Humbert

I've just learnt something, which is probably why you've been ok as well, but because chloramine lasts longer than chlorine, they tend to use it if the water has a long way to travel from the works. So if you know you have chlorine & not chloramine, you can be pretty certain it's always going to be like this. Unless in an emergency like Ian pointed out in the linked thread, then there's nothing you can do. This is were luck plays a part 😀
 
Humbert said:
safest solution: sterasyl filter mounted after tap for removing aluminium sulphate and activated carbon filter for removing chloramine.
Click to expand...
Sterasyl filters won't remove inorganic aluminium and are degraded by chloramine as it binds to the carbon. The Sterasyl bit is the clever bit of added silver salts, to stop bacteria growing on the filter.

Also generally no use with chloramine removal as flow rate is too high. Also if low rate is sufficiently low enough to break down chloramine (if present) you still have to use a suitable de-ammonia agent as the carbon binds to the chlorine bit of chloramine releasing ammonia.

Plenty of threads of "house water filter" stopping working when water board moves to chloramine, by letting chloramine through at high flow rates and ammonia at low flow rates.
 
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