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Water Changes

Sk3lly said:
I will from now on add prime to my water change barrel
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A 100% working RO & DI system will not leave any chlorine or ammonia in the RO output from the incoming waters chlorine or chloramine. However in practice, especially if you don't keep on top of Chlor+ prefilter changing, membrane changing, refreshing/replacing the DI resin and your incoming water has chloramine you can get ammonia (or more rarely chlorine) in the RO water. You can of course just aerate the water for 24hours before use which will remove ammonia and chlorine or test water before use for both ammonia or chlorine or just dose with a small dose of Prime just in case.
 
ian_m said:
Very dangerous this, you must really always use a dechlorinator. The forums are full of people killing their fish, one guy lost about £600 of fish all in one go after a water change. This issue is chloramine.

Degassing water does not remove chloramine which may be in your water as standard or added to water by the water company in an emergency. I have certainly had chloramine added to my water for a couple of days after we had a water main burst. Water companies used to leaflet people when they did this, warning people not to use the water in their "aquariums & pond" but "but as everyone uses dechlorinator now", they no longer leaflet people.

As you will possibly not know when chloramine is added to your water, you must always add dechlorinator to your water before adding to the tank. If you really really really don't want to dechlorinate test the water with a chlorine test kit first.
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I know we all hate test kits on this forum, but are there any cheap test-strips that test for chlorine+chloramine? I do 2 50% water changes a week, I hate paying for new dechlorinator!

Another thing, if my tank is 80L and I change 50% of the water, do I only need to add enough dechlorinator to treat 40L?
 
Seachem Prime seems to be one of the few that expressly states to get rid of chloramines... and to be honest the amount to be added in each water change is ridiculous compared to other dechlorinators (at least for me, with just 100 liters of total volume with all my tanks). Now I'm using also rain water mixed with tap water (75%-25%), lately I forgot to add the dechlorinator 🙁 but not when there are meteorological events to be worried about. I live in the Mediterranean coast and sometimes (i.e. during the very dry summers or after some very heavy rainfalls in autumn) the water quality decreases and the risk of having chloramines is higher.

Jordi
 
Julian said:
but are there any cheap test-strips that test for chlorine+chloramine?
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Yes, swimming pool test strips work very well, apparently and are cheap, though need to ensure correct type to cope with total chlorine and not just free chlorine.

Julian said:
do I only need to add enough dechlorinator to treat 40L
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Only add Prime for the volume of fresh water if it is being put in a bucket first for 40litres you will need 1ml of Prime.

If you are adding your fresh water to your tank, you add the Prime dose for your tank volume so 2ml.

Dose using a syringe or pipette.

Prime costs say £18 for 500ml so that's 3.6p per ml. Money well spent.
 
ian_m said:
Yes, swimming pool test strips work very well, apparently and are cheap, though need to ensure correct type to cope with total chlorine and not just free chlorine.

Only add Prime for the volume of fresh water if it is being put in a bucket first for 40litres you will need 1ml of Prime.

If you are adding your fresh water to your tank, you add the Prime dose for your tank volume so 2ml.

Dose using a syringe or pipette.

Prime costs say £18 for 500ml so that's 3.6p per ml. Money well spent.
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Wow, that's so much more cost effective than Tetra Aquasafe... Thanks!
 
Julian said:
Tetra Aquasafe
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Remember also the Aquasafe can't be used if you have Purigen in you tank/filter. It clogs the pores and stops it being able to regenerate.

Julian said:
Wow, that's so much more cost effective
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But Prime is even more expensive compared to sodium thiosulphate. You can get 1KG for £8 on Ebay and you will require 0.4gr (0.24pence worth) to dechlorinate your 40l. Thiosulphate won't remove ammonia though, you need Prime or AmQuel for that.
 
Sk3lly said:
Anyway apologies OP i have taken your thread in a different direction. Hopefully some of the info that has been shared has been useful to you.
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that's no bother 🙂 I have learnt a lot more than I expected. :lol: It's all good though.. I need all this as I consider myself a newbie.
 
Christos Ioannou said:
Which ingredient causes this?
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It's any water conditioner that contains a slime coat will render Purigen useless (un rechargeable).

At the bottom of the page here.
http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Purigen.html

Here is a big list of water conditioners and if they contain slime coat.
http://www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/rev-cond.htm

Slime coat is rather a moot point, as the amount added to the water is going to make b*gger all difference to the fish and people have been using sodium thiosulphate and other non slime coat conditioners for years and have never seen fish issues. More of a marketing point I feel.
 
ian_m said:
It's any water conditioner that contains a slime coat will render Purigen useless (un rechargeable).

At the bottom of the page here.
http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Purigen.html

Here is a big list of water conditioners and if they contain slime coat.
http://www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/rev-cond.htm

Slime coat is rather a moot point, as the amount added to the water is going to make b*gger all difference to the fish and people have been using sodium thiosulphate and other non slime coat conditioners for years and have never seen fish issues. More of a marketing point I feel.
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So to understand this correctly... The use of seachem prime renders the purigen effectively useless?


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