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Water changes

There's no rule whether to use dechlorinator or not. It all depends on your personal water treatment and how well you can rely on them. In my area I can certainly skip the dechlorinator part altogether without any issues due to very low levels of chlorine and no ammonia/nitrites or nitrates or for the most part no heavy metals(there is still very tiny amounts of copper although I don't think such levels affect my shrimp at all) but I prefer not to skip dechlor to be on the safe side in case the water gets contaminated without me reading the news on time or them bothering to inform the public at all. At times the water stinks of chlorine and even ammonia I can't even drink a glass and although it's rare, I think they certainly change the levels from time to time despite what they announce.
But besides that, I pour the water straight into the tank and then dechlorinate and have done that on shrimp tanks as well without any deaths. I sometimes forgot to dechlorinate without issues either.
 
Hi all,
sparkyweasel said:
That EU standard allows a maximum of 2mg/l of copper. That would be toxic to many crustaceans.
Click to expand...
Yes this is true, the reason is that copper isn't very toxic (it is a essential micro-nutrient to both plants and animals), so the limits are set quite high. In reality the treatment with phosphorus and NaOH has the effect of immobilizing zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), Tin (Sn), cadmium (Cd) etc. as well as lead (Pb).

From December 2013 the new limit for lead levels in drinking water in 10ppb (1x10-8g /l ). the outcome of this is that the water companies will be dosing higher levels of both phosphates (usually ~ 1 ppm PO4--- added) and NaOH.

Details are here<
Policy - Lead in Drinking Water
> & <http://dwi.defra.gov.uk/research/completed-research/reports/DWI70_2_260exsum.pdf>.

cheers Darrel
 
I always put my water out the night before water change and preheat to 22 degrees with a couple of squirts of Prime just to be on the safe side - after all Prime lasts ages and its just not worth the risk without it.
 
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