# Other Aquarium Forums > Freshwater Fauna > Killifish >  Chlorine and Chloramine... Again!

## whuntley

C'mon guys. 

You are making much too big a deal about cool temperatures. and not nearly enough about other aspects of good husbandry.

You have chloramines, so when I hear someone is dechlorinating their water, shivvers run up my spine. Brrrr! Are there people still doing that?

Ammonia will cause all kinds of gill, skin and egg damage, and to dechlorinate water containing chloramine is a sure way to poison the tank with a big burst of ammonium/ammonia. Unless pH is kept below 7.5 or so, the ammonia will horribly burn anything at all delicate -- like gills or eggs.

In the above posts, there was a clear description of what is called "cottonmouth disease" or _columnaris_ infection. That is a very common result of either chlorine or ammonia burns. It also may indicate poor overall water cleanliness and inadequate water changes

I do believe that much of your problem is failure to deal with your local water chemistry, and what works for one part of the city will certainly be different in another. Learn the basics and figure out what you need to do to make it work in your local neighborhood.

I have bred BIT and BIVs and many other Chromaphyos at temperatures well above 26C, and BIV Funge refused to even spawn in such cold water! It had to be 25 or 26C or above before they even produced anything.

The coastal rainforest fishes of Nigeria, Cameroon and Gabon all live right on the equator in mostly very slow-moving water. [The coastal shelf is pretty flat.] Much of it is quite soft, usually a bit acidic, but it is warm -- 23-26C, sometimes much higher. Most of the soluble minerals in rainforest soils have been soaked out by tens of thousands of years of heavy rain, leaving the water very low in tds and very soft, too. [They are not the same thing, BTW.]

You need to protect breeders and eggs from powerful oxidizers, like chlorine and chloramine and ammonia. There is no substitute for proper water treatment when the water supplier is trying hard to keep you from suffering from cholera and typhoid. Modern urban water policy avoids adding chlorine without any ammonium, for it tends to combine with organics in the water system to form carcinogenic trihalomethanes, like chloroform. When they add ammonium, the chlorine combines with it to form stable chloramine that is still a very good bacteria killer but lasts far longer in the system.

Use "Amquel" or "Prime" or "Ammo Lock 2" or equivalent formaldehyde-like dechloraminators. Never again even consider using the old dechlor products based on sodium thiosulfate (photographer's hypo). I have known them to kill entire fishrooms at water-change time! [Typical label hyperbole is "breaks the chlorine-ammonium bond!" Yeah, and where does that ammonium go? They never say.]

Be aware that aerating over night will do nothing at all to chloramine. It has a typical half-life of 5 weeks. You have 2 choices. Use a commercial de-chloraminator that ties up the ammonium, or use a very slow high-pressure activated-carbon filter. There are no known alternatives if you live in a city that wants to protect its citizens from disease.

I, personally, prefer the carbon filters, because the dechloraminators also kill all the beneficial infusoria that makes for such good first food for the smaller babies. Get a chlorine test kit so you can tell when to change the filter and to assure it is working properly. Refrigerator taste and odor filters are cheap and ideal for this use.

The subject fishes probably do better in softer water. It may be 99% myth, but Ca++ and Mg++ ions in the water (general hardness) supposedly interferes with hatching by toughening the egg chorion too much. Since I have bred everything from neon tetras to SA dwarf cichlids in water with a general hardness of 17 degrees (300 ppm as CaCO3 equivalent) or more, I tend to take such reports with a grain of salt.

Nevertheless, I do think my BITs and BIVs have done somewhat better and produced more young when I used RO to dilute that hard water down by 50% or more. I'd make a general rule that GH should be 6 degrees or below for good results, maybe even a little lower for the highland species like Diapterons. OTOH, most Fp. loved that hard water!

The alkalinity, KH, should always be kept at about 4 degrees or above. This can be done with some baking soda, if you have measurable hardness, and you can add some "No Salt" (potassium chloride) sold in grocery stores for folks on low-sodium diets if the water out of your tap is really soft (GH below 1 degree).

Why all this? Good cell metabolism involves a whole host of reactions that are interactive results of the "essential electrolytes" in the water. If you have a little Ca++ and Mg++ (GH) and some Na+ and K+ (sodium and potassium ions) the water can support life. missing any one of those basic four and your water can become toxic to fish and eggs.

Two cheap kits are essential to knowing if your water is OK. Those are a GH kit and a KH kit. Tetra often packages them as a pair. A Ph meter and a conductivity (tds) meter can make life easy once you have the basics under control, but are less essential than the above.

1) You want low hardness (Ca++ and Mg++) in your water, but you do need some. [Pure distilled or RO water will kill most fish, slowly.] An amount of 4-6 degrees will usually be good. My tap water is about 3.5 degrees which supports most killies with little additives. Fish and plants all love it.

2) You can keep pH stable by simply having enough carbonates/bicarbonates in your water. Some comes in as part of the limestone/dolomites that gave you your hardness. The Ca and Mg often were originally dissolved as the carbonates and bicarbonates of those minerals

To just add sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) is usually all you need to do to raise KH to about 3 or 4. If your water has no potassium, the sodium becomes poisonous, so adding in some small amount of potassium chloride can prevent that. [If your plants are browning mysteriously, try adding some potassium to see if that is what is missing.]

Potassium and sodium become monovalent ions when dissolved (Na+ and K+) but don't register on a GH test. They do cause conductivity to rise, so knowing your GH and then measuring your total "tds" can let you establish a normal ratio that won't vary a lot in most water districts. Figure that 1 degree of hardness is about 18 ppm of tds. Measure GH and multiply degrees by 18 to get the ppm of equivalent CaCO3 hardness. Any excess tds is most likely due to sodium and potassium ions in normal tap water.

After a while, I just use the tds meter to know how much dissolved stuff is in my water, and can assume the ratio of total tds to that due to GH is pretty constant (if I'm not stupidly making my fish water into some kind of chemical soup by adding other chemicals).

If I check that tds is between 2X and 0.5X, and temperatures are close, I can move fish or eggs from one water to another with utter disregard of pH. The main impact of pH is to turn harmless ionized ammonium (NH4+) into molecular ammonia which is deadly in the extreme (threshold below 5 ppb). This happens as pH gets above 7.5 and is extreme at a pH of 9. My KH keeps my water buffered to about 7.6 or so and ammonia is of little concern, particularly in a planted tank. At a pH of 9, the percent of ammonium that converts to deadly ammonia is 50 times what it is at a pH of 7.

The final element to stopping the egg fungus is to remove or prevent the bacteria that kill the eggs. That action then lets fungus come along to do clean-up duty. Fungus alone never seems to harm eggs. It's just an opportunistic feeder that spots necrotic tissue quickly. 

Plants support great numbers of rotifers, paramecia and other filter feeders. Those can remove most free swimming bacteria if the plants are well-lighted, fed and thus actively photosythesizing. Plants will also act as ammonium sponges to clean the water chemically. Dyes can be antibacterial, and we have all seen the benefits of weak mixtures of acriflavin and methylene blue. I even put small sprigs of Java Moss in egg-hatching Petri dishes, and I don't leave them in the dark!

Removing detritus, particularly dead bbs and other rich foods, is essential to keeping the water in good shape to sustain live eggs. What cannot be vacuumed should be trapped in a filter, where local resident bacteria can consume it.

There are many other aspects of good husbandry, but I have chosen to lean pretty hard on those I think cause the most certain defeat, and that tend to be mistaught at the LFS. If you pay attention to oxygen problems with warmer water, using deBruyn filters o/e, I think you can ignore your 30C+ tank temps. [I add airstones or ice cubes to anything much above that level.]

Wright

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## timebomb

Jianyang, Kee Hoe,

The regularity in which you 2 have been reporting casualties, I guess it's a matter of time before someone like Wright comes along and tell you a thing or 2 about fish husbandry. Frankly, it's been something at the tip of my tongue for a long time too.

Wright's post is rather technical and I'm sure he knows best but I still don't believe there's chloramine in our water. Singapore is so small we're just one big city. The water from our taps must be about the same, no matter which part of the island we live. When I change water, I often change more than half at one go. I never age the new water. It's always straight from the tap and into the tank. Slowly, of course. 

As for temperature, I do agree with Wright that it couldn't be the cause of death. _Aphyosemion_ prefer cold but not that cold, unless what you have is an _A. elberti._ I suspect it could be due to overcrowding. The rate at which you 2 acquire new fish, I don't know how you find the space to keep them  :Laughing: 

Loh K L

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## stormhawk

KL,

You'd be surprised at how small the number of species I currently have.  :Laughing:  

That said, I knew the first male died soon after I saw him near the water surface struggling, and the second died of dropsy. Had it anything to do with the water, the females would have long been dead too. I do water changes on all my tanks using the same water source. Had there been chloramine, I believe my snails and shrimps would have been the first to die off, but then again, that's my opinion.  :Cool: 

The fish were given adequate care as per their requirements and were kept in very much the same way as how Ronnie keeps his. Why the deaths were confined to just the males, I really don't know. They were all fed the same diet and had a tank all to themselves.

With regards to the low egg production, I have no idea either. The fish were fed daily with a mix of tubifex and on occasions, newly hatched BBS to augment their worm diet. The females most certainly fattened up nicely and their colours are testament to this. I could only find maybe 2, or 3 eggs per week or in some cases, zero per week. Even then, fertility was nearly zero. The eggs laid never developed and fungused soon after.

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## whuntley

> Jianyang, Kee Hoe,
> 
> The regularity in which you 2 have been reporting casualties, I guess it's a matter of time before someone like Wright comes along and tell you a thing or 2 about fish husbandry. Frankly, it's been something at the tip of my tongue for a long time too.
> 
> Wright's post is rather technical and I'm sure he knows best but I still don't believe there's chloramine in our water.


This is exactly the sort of "state of denial" that was common here about 10-12 years ago. Our EPA had mandated the change to chloramine, starting with larger municipal suppliers, and the tropical fish business was incredibly slow to catch on.

I personally knew two Betta IBC Grand Champions who wiped out their entire fishrooms because they were so sure their dechlor favorite product was all they needed. Bettas were hit worst, because they have a habit of 100% water changes on lots of small containers.

During the same era, I knew several killie keepers (famous ones!) whose fish fertility was dropped dramatically because they didn't know their city was adding chloramine to the water. Like you, they were so sure they had no chlorine they refused to buy a little $3 swimming pool test kit and check for chlorine!

They would have found the test positive, and could have then aerated for a day and still found the test positive for chlorine, proving their water had chloramine. Most kept losing fish and eggs rather than admit that they had poisons in their tap water.

One who didn't know what was wrong installed a whole-house carbon filter and was astonished at how his fish health improved and fertility suddenly skyrocketed.





> Singapore is so small we're just one big city. The water from our taps must be about the same, no matter which part of the island we live. When I change water, I often change more than half at one go. I never age the new water. It's always straight from the tap and into the tank. Slowly, of course.


There are numerous postings here that prove that statement to be dead wrong. Different parts of the city get their water from widely different sources. The treatment is always dictated by frequent bacteria measurements in any modern system, so the amount of addition and changes in amount will vary wildly from one place to another within any larger city. 

Partial water changes with chloramine present are usually not immediately deadly. 50% can be pretty risky, and 100% are to be avoided at all costs.

Until you tell me the reduced fertility and the deaths are in water that was treated with Amquel o/e or that you actually bothered to measure and found chlorine was less that 0.1 ppm, I will mark down what I am reading here as a repeat of what I observed in the SF Bay area in the early '90s.

It is so easy to test. It is also easy to talk to your local water supplier's engineers. That almost no one does this is absolutely amazing, to me.

Wright

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## RonWill

> ...but I still don't believe there's chloramine in our water. Singapore is so small we're just one big city. The water from our taps must be about the same, no matter which part of the island we live


Have you read *this* lately? I borrowed a test kit but since no one will believe what I see, I'll keep my trap shut but humbly suggest for those "to seek and ye shall find".

...and from *those* you won't argue with... "The residual chlorine present in tap water is in the form of chloramines or free chlorine"

Then again, we're all free to choose to believe that ignorance is bliss (until our killies start bellying up).  :Twisted Evil:

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## RonWill

oh, and I should mention that my Mathematics sucks, flunked Chemistry, never studied Electrical or Electronics, eye sight is screwed and I think funny when my fingers are dry. Maybe that's why no one believes me  :Laughing:

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## ruyle

> oh, and I should mention that my Mathematics sucks, flunked Chemistry, never studied Electrical or Electronics, eye sight is screwed and I think funny when my fingers are dry. Maybe that's why no one believes me


But then, who would listen to the mutterings of a madman, anyway?  :Laughing:  
How like Priam's daughter, Cassandra, who said "no boys, don't pull that
wooden horse inside the city walls!" and the rest, is history.  :Laughing:  

Bill

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## whuntley

Thanks Ron,

The references you cited make my point far more eloquently than all my verbiage.

Some (not all) Singapore water has chloramine.

Chloramine is very good for you, for preventing cancer and for stopping epidemics.

Chloramine, at very low levels, sterilizes/kills eggs making them fungus when they shouldn't, and sterilizes killifish. In concentrations above 1 ppm it can kill fish quickly. IME. Nothos are particularly vulnerable.

Treating chloramine with an old-style dechlor product releases a burst of potentially deadly ammonium/ammonia. [Safe if pH stays low. Deadly if pH is high. Don't risk it!]

A chlorine test kit costs only a few bucks, takes but a minute to use, and can give warning when your water treatment has changed. And it will change!

Most inverts react very differently to chlorine/chloramine, so they are not useful "mine canaries."

Bottom Line:

"*Don't waste another penny on expensive fish or eggs until you know you can handle their water properly.*"

Wright

PS. I noticed no reported potassium in the water report cited by Ron. If it is truly low, adding salt or other sources of sodium (baking soda, for example) can make your plants turn brown and fish health to be marginal.

I'm no physiologist, but even I know that sodium and potassium work as a pair to cause/allow certain kinds of transport across cell walls. If one is totally absent, the other can become rather toxic. I have found Seachem's "Equilibrium" allows me to improve the electrolytes of too-soft water without undue disturbance of the water chemistry, otherwise.

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## Scott_sg

Hi,
Just to add to what Wright has been saying, you also need to be careful with what your chlorine test kit is really testing for. It is entirely possible to have a zero chlorine result and still have high chloramines. The swimming pool people are the real experts on this stuff and the test kits are much cheaper. There used to be three basic tests for chlorine and chloramines they used but I have not seen a swimming pool shop in Singapore. 
I think the other reason why there is mixed results in Singapore is that from my understanding on top of each block the water is stored, so depending on the blocks water usage, it will effect the levels of chloramine in the water.
Chloramine can last a couple of months, and will really stay there reacting with everything in the water until it is all used up, that includes reacting with sperm, so the eggs don't really get a chance to be fertilized, hence the egg fungus. In this case the biochem of unfertilized eggs is very sensitive to water chemistry.
It can also play around with the water ph, that is why the water here comes out of the tap slightly alkaline, and then will drop. So that is another reason for the mixed results. 
Activated carbon is a good way to get rid of the stuff if you don't like to use the proprietary water conditioners. You can always stick it in the oven to reactivate it within reason.
And to agree with Wright again, just adding sodium chlorine - table salt to the water can do a lot more harm than good. Get a bag a marine salt, there is lots around now after the "nemo" craze.
Also have to agree most problems tend to trace back to water quality somewhere along the line. Freshwater fish are generally very adaptable to environmental conditions, but ammonia and chlorine will finish them off very fast. In this case the problem is worse because it is subtle and slowly drags on for months, fertility problems, fungal infections and so on.
The easy way to check on any dead or dying fish, is to look for brown gills and any obvious lesions.
And one other thing chloramines will also affect any biofiltration you have going for the same reasons, effectively any free chloramine in your tank is a long term disinfectant. 
I am one of those who suffered a fish room nightmare in the early 90's when the city I was living in changed over to using chloramines.

My 2c worth,
Scott.

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## keehoe

> Jianyang, Kee Hoe,
> 
> The regularity in which you 2 have been reporting casualties, I guess it's a matter of time before someone like Wright comes along and tell you a thing or 2 about fish husbandry. Frankly, it's been something at the tip of my tongue for a long time too.
> 
> Wright's post is rather technical and I'm sure he knows best but I still don't believe there's chloramine in our water. Singapore is so small we're just one big city. The water from our taps must be about the same, no matter which part of the island we live. When I change water, I often change more than half at one go. I never age the new water. It's always straight from the tap and into the tank. Slowly, of course. 
> 
> As for temperature, I do agree with Wright that it couldn't be the cause of death. _Aphyosemion_ prefer cold but not that cold, unless what you have is an _A. elberti._ I suspect it could be due to overcrowding. The rate at which you 2 acquire new fish, I don't know how you find the space to keep them 
> 
> Loh K L


Thanks Wright, i think the death of my fish were due to more physical contact with the pair. They were fine when they keep separately. But what you have explain sure helps in keeping our fish in good shape. I will keep that in mind especially when preparinging them for breeding.

KL, our water are from different location. Water in the west side is more "made" for industrial use rather than life support system. So if you do a test on the water. You will be surprise how toxic water in the west is.

Anyway, all water going into tank were through a double gang carbon filter. I hate to wait for a days for the water to be ready. So Carbon filter does the job. 

I treat them the same way as with the diapteron. Except the PH which is much lower in Diapteron tank.

Aphyosemion is a big family, a few that i know such as AUS, STR, CYA, EXO, MIM, SJO and of course BIT. Their requirement can be quite different but, 25C should be OK for most.

Ya, feel bad that they die in my hands. Especially beautiful fishes such as STR and BIT. Felt defeated, but again not only we had difficulty keeping them.  :Wink:

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## RonWill

> Treating chloramine with an old-style dechlor product releases a burst of potentially deadly ammonium/ammonia. [Safe if pH stays low. Deadly if pH is high]
> 
> PS. I noticed no reported potassium in the water report cited by Ron. If it is truly low, adding salt or other sources of sodium (baking soda, for example) can make your plants turn brown and fish health to be marginal


 I know next to nuthin' 'bout biology but have taken to using a *3-module* sediment/5micron-carbon rig (but it's out on temporary loan to someone in greater need)

Yesterday, a fellow forumer almost died of frustration trying to explain the effects of sodium/potassium (and sadly, none was retained by the grey matter), so I won't pretend to understand the lengthy bit you wrote earlier. Printed it for later digestion.

In the end, a blunt advise from my friend, "just get *this*!"

I'll let you figure out whatever is printed on the *back label*. Price-wise, it's a little more than I'm prepared to pay, so will marine salt do? It's usually a teaspoon into a low bio-load 'reservoir tank' whenever I top up. (same "Red Sea" marine salt used in my BBS hatchery)

The pH in my setups ranges between 4.0~7.0 but FWIW, the temperature issue is real. I'll prove it when I have the necessary facilities.

SIDE NOTE:
Jian Yang, please split the chloramine discussions and join to "*Chloramine and suggested treatment*".

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## timebomb

It's not that I'm in self-denial but you can't blame me for being skeptical. I took a look at the link Ronnie mentioned but even before I read what was said on the main site, I was already even more skeptical after I read the introduction. If chloramines had been in our water since 1993, we should have seen many more "total wipe-outs" by now. If chloramine is as lethal as many of you alleged, why isn't this happening?

Anyway, to put an end to the argument, I bought a chlorine test kit a few hours ago. 


I've never used one before so I had to read the instructions. They're pretty straightforward actually. Fill up the vial with 20 ml of tap water. Then add 8 drops of the reagent.



Cap the vial and give it a good shake. Remove the cover and check the result immediately. Place vial on a white surface and observe from above. If no colour change occurs, the water does not contain chlorine. Harmful chlorine contents from 0.02 mg/l will result in yellow coloration, with higher chlorine contents the colour will change into reddish.


After about 10 minutes, the view from above:


So, what's next?

It's not like I'm mad or anything but some of you are really rather preachy. You seem to think people are in self-denial or ignorant just because they don't believe what you say. You just can't stomach disagreements. I've never believe there's chloramine in my water for the simple reason that if it's there, I would have suffered total wipe-outs many times. I've kept fish since 1974, for christs' sake. Often, I change more than two-thirds of my water at one go. It's not that I have never lost fish before but fish die for many reasons. Besides over-crowding which I suspect is the main cause of death in many cases, there's also over-feeding. Fish are healthiest when they are kept hungry but many of you raise them like gluttons. In their natural habitats, fish get very little food. More often than not, it's just enough. Rarely, would fish in the wild get to feed everyday like the kind of feeding regime they get in our tanks. Ours are pampered fish, raised with tender loving care. But that turns them into wimps, that die instantly from the first sign of ill-health. 

I said on my main site that sometimes, a bit of neglect helps. I still think that's true.

Loh K L

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## ruyle

KL,
Does your housing complex have its own water filtration system? Curious,
can't imagine not having something in the water to safeguard bacteria. At
a clinic in Nevada where I worked we had a $40,000 multi-stage filtration
system for our drinking fountains and treatment rooms! And there was no
chlorine/chloramine in it after run through such a system. The tapwater
was terrible with heavy metals, cyanide, etc.

Bill

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## whuntley

> It's not that I'm in self-denial but you can't blame me for being skeptical. I took a look at the link Ronnie mentioned but even before I read what was said on the main site, I was already even more skeptical after I read the introduction. If chloramines had been in our water since 1993, we should have seen many more "total wipe-outs" by now. If chloramine is as lethal as many of you alleged, why isn't this happening?


Because it is only very rarely lethal. At levels useful for stopping epidemic, it can reduce fertility, and degrade the health of the fish a little bit. Many eggs will be infertile, possibly because it kills sperm at those levels. Symptoms are most subtle and not at all obvious on the fish, themselves.

Fishroom wipeouts usually require three coincident factors:

1. Unusually high chloramine dosages -- 2.5-3 ppm in one case I followed.

2. 100% water changes. Betta brood stock are often kept in individual small jars and 100% water changes are normal. [They and Nothos seem more sensitive.]

3. High pH. 

EPA mandated high pH in areas where copper pipes had been used a lot. It keeps lead from solder joints and copper from the pipes from etching and showing up in human baby blood, for example.

Ammonium, from using a dechlor product on chloramine is quite harmless at low pH. It just nicely feeds the plants. Enough of it converts to toxic ammonia at pH over 8 to be lethal to smaller and more sensitive fish. Then, and only then, does the mistreatment of chloramine appear to be lethal.

A single test for chlorine doesn't tell one a thing. The use of chloramine is usually tailored to the coliform bacteria count in the water. That can be zero in "newater" if processed through an RO filter. Changes in source or mixing during shortages can change things quite a bit. During the drought in the late '90s, the treatment of SF water was drastically altered, and customers, on the SF peninsula, had real problems with killy fertility and some mortality due to getting water with chloramine and no warning.

I did a long and too-preachy note on why the secrecy about chloramine, but wiped it out by hitting the wrong button.  :Very Happy:  Basically, in the US, anyone with "deep pockets," admitting any change to a process will be sued by our over-active trial lawyers. No city wants to compensate every cancer victim because, for years, they were using chlorine instead of chloramine. Admitting the change is just too risky.

Wright

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## timebomb

Oh, but the culture here is different, Wright. We know that lawsuits are not uncommon in the USA but over here, no one sues the government. Period. When there's sueing, it's always the government who doing that. 

The ornamental fish industry is a million dollar business. I would concede that the government here could possibly care little for hobbyists like us and likely, even less for our fish but I seriously doubt they would do anything to undermine the economy by not warning fish farms/shops/importers/exporters about the lethal effects of chloramine. 

I called my good friend, Edward this morning to ask him for his opinion. Edward who's on good terms with many fish shop owners said 99% of all such owners use water directly from the taps. 

I later visited Karin Leow of Far East Aquatic's and she says she uses anti-chlorine in her tanks. I asked her for permission to test her tap water and she agreed. The results were negative. There was not a single trace of chlorine in the tap water in her shop. 

It did occurred to me when I bought the test kit that it may not be quite reliable. I would have bought the same test kit from different brands if they were available. But I only managed to find the Sera one. Could it be then that the test kit wasn't working at all?

I asked Edward and he said it's possible. After all, who ever buys chlorine test kits? The ones sold in fish shops must have been left on the shelves for years. To find out, Edward said, we can use bleach. A drop of bleach in 20 ml of water should contain enough chlorine to be detected by the test kit. So that's what I did.

I got a bottle of bleach from Karin.


Here's what the label says:


I added a drop of the bleach into 20 ml of tap water from Karin's shop. The instructions on the test kit were that I should add 8 drops from the reagent. This is what happened after I added just one drop.


I suppose the results show the test kit is reliable. If that's the case, there's no chlorine, let alone chloramine, in the tap water in my house as well as Karin's shop. As for the water in your tap, you have to buy a test kit yourself to be sure.

Loh K L

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## Scott_sg

To throw in my 2 cents, testing for chlorine and chloramine are different. You need to make sure the test kit says chloramine, or as a last resort an ammonia test kit "might" pick up some chloramines depending on the reagents.

The practical difference between chlorine and chloramine is that chlorine is an instant "hit", it will damage stuff and then dissipate fast. Chloramine is a slow release, and that is the reason why water boards prefer it now. 

It wont kill fish immediately like water straight from the tap used to, but it will cause fertility problems and fungal infections, since it is slowly releasing chlorine and ammonia until it has all reacted away.

It also causes some weird ph swings, and under the right ( or wrong ) conditions it will crash a system since as the ph increases more of the chloramine will disassociate to chlorine and ammonia, which increases the ph and sets up a fast chain reaction which keeps producing ammonia and chlorine until all the chloramine is used up. Then the ph will crash back down as the ammonia and chlorine dissipate or are nitrified.

Could be wrong but that is my rough understanding of the chemistry. 

Scott.

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## timebomb

> KL, Does your housing complex have its own water filtration system?


No, Bill, it does not. I live in a flat which is 12 storeys high. On the roof of the block is a water tank. It's used only for holding water and as far as I know, there's no filtration system. The water is pumped up via stainless steel pipes. Floors from 6th storey and higher get their water from these tanks. The units on lower floors get their water from below, through pipes.

I'm quite sure there's chlorine in the water when it leaves the reservoirs. But during the time it is held in the water tank, the chlorine evaporates. Over the years, I've met a couple of Discus breeders who regularly change almost 100% of the water in their tanks everyday. I'm not exaggerating. It's almost 100% because just before they put the new water in (straight from the tap), the fish are flopping about on their sides at the bottom of the tank.

Loh K L

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## timebomb

> To throw in my 2 cents, testing for chlorine and chloramine are different.


But Wright says to test for chloramine by testing for chlorine, Scott. If I leave the solution in the vial to stand overnight, would the chloramine which you say is a slow-release chemical, show up?

Anyway, I've already completed the first task Wright suggested, which is to get a test kit to check for chlorine. Now he tells me one test isn't good enough. So how many times do I have to test the water? Anyway, to appease him further, I carried out the second task a few hours ago. I called the PUB (Public Utilities Board) and spoke to someone there. I don't know if he's an engineer but he sounded quite knowledgeable. 

Firstly, he stressed many times we have nothing to worry about. He confirmed that chlorine has been replaced with chloramine many years ago but for some reason, the western part of Singapore did not get chloramine in their water until the 19th of October 2005, almost exactly a month ago. A few months earlier, the PUB made calls to all fish shop/farm owners in the western area to warn them of the impending change. This was later followed up with letters. I asked for a copy of the letter to be sent to me but was turned down. 

Just as what Wright taught us, the officer said that to test for chloramine, test for chlorine.

So I asked him why I couldnt detect chlorine in my tap water? He replied that the amount of chloramine in our tap water depends very much on the distance between our house and the water works station. The further you are from the water works, the less chloramine there is in your water. He said the water from my taps comes from Woodleigh water works, which is about a few miles from where I live. He also said its actually a waste of my money to buy the chlorine test kit if I never had problems with mass die-offs in the first place. Maybe I should ask Wright to give me back my money.

During our conversation, the officer speculated that our fish could have somehow evolved or conditioned themselves to withstand the lethal effects of chloramines. Frankly, I dont believe this but he was just speculating. It isnt a statement from the PUB, mind you.

When I asked him why there wasnt a public announcement, he mentioned that the replacement of chlorine with chloramine was carried out many years ago. He couldnt remember if there was a public announcement but he said they prefer to do this discreetly (with phone calls and letters) so as not to alarm the general public. 

So there you have it, folks. Do you have anything to worry about? Frankly, I dont know but the officer insisted several times that if you have never experienced mass die-offs in your tanks, theres no necessity to worry about chloramine. I've already done all I can to find out for sure if there's chloramine in our water. As far as I know, there's none in mine. I don't know about yours.

Loh K L

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## whuntley

KL,

Why do you keep referring to massive die-offs? They are, of course, possible but highly unlikely with chloramine in your water at modest levels.

The likely result, in most situations, is eggs that fungus too much, and generally unhealthy but mostly surviving fish. More deaths than normal and too many opportunistic diseases are common side effects. Temporary sterilization is very common, but I'm not aware of permanent sterilization happening. Difficulty growing out babies is a probable effect, too.

Massive die offs are when one ignorantly uses hypo to treat the chloramine, changes most of the water all at once, and releases a burst of ammonia in high-pH water. This typically happens when chloramine is at a really high level -- 2.5 ppm or more. It usually takes all four conditions for a fishroom wipeout. That is highly unlikely for our killies, to say the least.

[I know one PhD chemist who routinely uses hypo to treat his change water. His water is soft and has moderately low pH, he changes only modest amounts at any one time, and his chloramine levels are not unusually high. He has an excellent reputation as a killy breeder. I wouldn't do it, but he gets away with it.]

Chloramine and chlorine test exactly the same, if you use the usual dye indicator test. I don't know of any special test for chloramine. It is easy to repeat a positive test after 24 hours and see if the chlorine still tests positive. If so, you have chloramine. If the test reads zero after 24 hours of aeration (but was higher at first), you had chlorine but no chloramine. Simple.

Retesting would be called for if you think things have changed at the water works. Unusual egg failures, or signs of respiritory distress in the fish should send one scurrying for the chlorine test kit. If you detect an increase in your water, quickly dosing with Amquel o/e will relieve the stress on the fish and make future eggs fertile.

If you use a carbon filter in your incoming water line, a periodic check to be sure no chloramine is "punching through" is advisable. I always used two filters in series, with a tap between. After about 6-8 months, the water from the tap would test positive for chlorine, so I threw away the first filter, replaced it with the essentially unused second one, and put a new cartridge in the second filter container. Chlorine, chloramine and ammonia are only very weakly attracted to activated carbon, so very slow flow is required. I always trickled water into a storage barrel so there was a long contact time with the carbon. Again, testing for chlorine can tell you if the flow is too fast (assuming your water does test positive for chloramine/chlorine).

As you can see, there are many uses for the chlorine test, so I won't pay you for what your test kit cost. In fact, when I saw the brand, I groaned, for that test kit probably costs about 30 times what a normal chlorine test kit costs at the pool and spa department of the hardware store. I buy 1 oz of test solution in a dropper bottle for US$0.78 at Home Depot. If I want the test chart and a test tube (I never do), it costs about $3. The Sera kits run over $10 as I recall, and it probably has a lot less than 1 oz. of reagent, too.

Letting the test tube stand over night will not change the test, for the kit reads chloramine exactly as if it was chlorine. I do not agree with Scott, here, as I have never seen a test kit specifically made for chloramine. There may be such a thing, but not in this country, AFAIK.

If you let water stay around for 5 weeks or so, it will test as having about half as much chlorine, because that is the half-life of chloramine on average. Your water guy was wrong about the distance having an effect on how much chloramine you will get. That used to be very true for chlorine, but chloramine stays full strength to the end of many miles of pipes (unless it takes months for the water to traverse them). What is happening is that your water gets very little or no chloramine because the bacteria count doesn't call for it *RIGHT NOW*! That does not mean they will not increase the amount if they get a higher count next week. Watching your fish and eggs for signs can clue you to test your water if you think things have changed. Keep the Amquel handy.

BTW, I keep referring to Amquel instead of Prime, Ammo Lock 2, etc., because I believe it has a much longer shelf life. Those are the three I have tested extensively, so cannot say about some of the more recent dechloraminators (many are snake oil, when you read the label). I only use Amquel a tiny bit for shipping water, so I need something that lasts a long time. [I don't believe Amquel 2 handles chloramine well, but I could be mistaken on that. It is cheap to make and Kordon owns that name.]

On ammonia tests:

Most aquarium-trade ammonia/ammonium tests are useless for chloramine testing. The first step on their sensitivity scale is usually about 250 ppb. Fish are stunted and babies are permanently damaged at ammonia levels of about 5 ppb, so the tests just don't have enough sensitivity to be useful. I have quit using them entirely, and watch for signs of gasping, etc. to warn me that ammonia might be a problem. A squirt of Amquel or a sudden lowering of pH (peat extract, vinegar, etc.) with some water change will usually solve such problems.

Wright

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## Scott_sg

Ok to be a smart&** again..

There is the simple answer..
The box KL is using shows Cl test kit, and then something is obviously not right if you are not getting any result. That implies that the water has no disinfectant at all which I would doubt.

Searching the net also results in thousands of links on the issue..

"Testing for chloramines. If you're testing for chloramines, make sure the test kit you've borrowed is testing for "total chlorine" or "combined chlorine," not for "free chlorine." A test for "free chlorine" would misleadingly read zero in chloraminated water. "

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/doc...chlorine.shtml 

Any lab company will have a range of chlorine test kits, swimming pool companies and so on, and the test kit for free chlorine is very different.

http://www.thomassci.com/product/26161

More complicated answer:

Free chlorine Cl2 is chemically very different to chloramine, which is essentially ClNH3 although there are different species. The properties of this are much closer to Ammonia than Chlorine, that is why in analytical chem labs they have to be careful of the results when testing for ammonia. And that is why a good Ammonia test kit will pick up some chloramine.

Although admittedly the average aquarium test kit is crap, and it is no way for testing for chloramine, but the point is an ammonia test will have a better chance of detecting chloramine than a free chlorine test.

Lamot (?) I think is the main manufacturer of the commercial reagents used, and in the States, I think it is Jungle Lab (??) or something similar sells chlorine/chloramine test kits - but I have no idea how good or bad they are.

Mass die offs in my opinion are really a combination of things, but my own feeling is simply that at the high water temperatures here, water conditions and pathogens spiral out of control very fast overwhelming fish. After all in microbiology labs for non human bacteria the optimum temperature is around 30C - so a tank can make a great incubator at that temp and above.

Chloramine is a pain rather than a disaster, Like Wright said - it will be all little odd things fungused eggs and so on..

My 3.14 cents worth..

Scott.

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## Scott_sg

Oh I forgot to mention, that the whole point of the change from chlorine to chloramine in water supplies is to ensure that chlorine makes it through the entire system. 
With free chlorine the amount of chlorine depended on how close you were to the supply, so some areas got lots while other areas far away got virtually none depending on the time and distance from the treatment station.
So the chloramine levels should be fairly consistent as that is the whole point of it.
As to the guy at the Utilities Board, maybe I will have to try some of his tobacco....mine just does not have the same effect..

Scott.

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## whuntley

Thanks Scott,

Particularly, thanks for the good links. I suggest everyone concerned here read the first one carefully. It is as factual as any I have seen and should be very easy to understand.

I vaguely remember that the City of San Francisco also had an excellent discussion on their water dept. web site a few years ago. IDK if it is still there. I'm too lazy and tired beating this dead horse to go hunt for it.

I had never seen the free chlorine tests as described in your second link. AFAIK, they have never been sold for pool or aquarium testing around here. I agree that they are contraindicated if you suspect chloramines. Get the simple, cheap kind that turns yellow to indicate total chlorine in the range of 1 ppm or less. That kind detects chloramine but gives a somewhat erroneous value, as I recall.

Free chlorine cannot exist in tap water, BTW. Cl2 combines with H2O to form hypochloric and hydrochloric acid. I suspect the so-called "free chlorine" tests are actually just measuring the sum of the hypochloric acid (HOCl) and the H+ and OCl- (hypochlorite) that it can break down to. [You do want a _total_ chlorine test kit, for sure.]

As a college sophomore, I can recall staying up all night trying to understand and memorize all the chemical properties of the chlorine compounds. I was so wiped out I blew the exam high, wide and handsome! Based on that, be sure to recognize that my free advice is worth every penny!  :Very Happy: 

Wright

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## Scott_sg

Wright you are totally correct about the free chlorine. Unfortunately I cannot boast about my university chemistry results, as a freshman I discovered the student club and all the sins in skirts there. So at the time that was much more interesting than chem textbooks  :Smile: 

I only know about the chlorine testing because I supported my studies working at my cousins swimming pool in summers. So I only vaguely remember an old professor droning on about halogen chemistry etc, but not much.

The problem with the chloramine issue is that there is really a lot of rumour and speculation. As far as I know even at present some of the actual chemistry - well the inside details are still not completely understood. But that is all academic.

For the fish, the reason I nag about it, is that in the early 90's I was living in the North of Australia - Townsville, and I had about 60 tanks in the garage and everything was going great, but then suddenly things went haywire.

I lost three tanks of fish during a water change in one go, then I started getting all sorts of fungus problems, even in an oscar. And all my spawnings just failed, every egg was fungusing. Like an idiot i kept coming up with all theories, some new fungus that just affected me, maybe all my fish were suddenly "old". 

I must of spent a fortune on methylene blue trying to protect eggs, I was using the stuff almost straight in desperation. Then I moved on to all the others, formalin, malachite green, acriflavine, and whatever i could find. My fishroom began to look like a disco fish room with all the coloured tanks. 

It was only by chance I met up with someone who knew better and told me about chloramines, after that things slowly began to return to normal. But that was after a lot of time and money, and my fishroom had turned into a chemical experiment by over medicating for every possible thing i could think of.

That is why i think the chloramine issue is subtle, one of those things that is very hard to figure out, but quite simple to fix.

Scott.

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## RonWill

> ...for the kit reads chloramine exactly as if it was chlorine. I do not agree with Scott, here, as I have never seen a test kit specifically made for chloramine. There may be such a thing, but not in this country, AFAIK.


Wright, there is. Try *this* and *this*.

IMHE, the test kit that Kwek Leong bought isn't sensitive. I know because shortly after my original thread, I rigged up the 3-module setup and bought the same one. It didn't detect anything either but I wasn't smart enough to use bleach. Instead, I tested the pool water when I went swimming with the kids. (Chloramine is difficult to measure quantitatively in low concentrations, and particularly when a combination of chlorine and chloramine are present)

My friend scoffed at the kit and said, "_If you want to play, get a toy. If you want to test, get a kit_". I asked about mine and he said, "_It isn't a kit_". His test kit confirmed what I suspected all along and the product in question is the *Hach CN-70*.
"_Measuring Chloramine
There are many kits suitable for measuring chloramine, with varying limits of detection. Many are not suitable for testing the low levels necessary for reef aquaria. The kit for measuring low levels of chloramine is the Hach CN-70 (part # 1454200). It is capable of measuring total chlorine and free chlorine. Chloramine is found by the difference between these two values. It has a low range scale that runs from 0 to 0.7 ppm, and a high range that runs from 0 to 3.5 ppm. The low range can detect 0.01 ppm chloramine"_

I would have bought one to prove to skeptical Kwek Leong but at more than SG$200, there are better things to do with the funds, like another nice tank rack or a chiller. Another kit I might have considered was from Aquarium Pharmaceuticals which tested for Chlorine, Chloramine and Ammonia but I saw that only once and couldn't find another. Old stock perhaps.

FWIW, chloramine was already in my mains prior to Oct 2005 and not all LFS in the west were notified. I know of at least two that suffered losses by the tankfuls. IMHO, our local services could have been more forthcoming... like others.
*San Francisco Public Utilities Commission*
Arlington (Virginia) Dept of Environmental Services *Fish facts* and *Chloramine in Water System*
*City of Brentwood, CA*

It isn't my intention to sow resentment or aggravate anyone but at least this thread served it's purpose, in that *there is* Chloramines in our water.

Before I shut my pie hole again, I'd appreciate it if someone can elaborate, in layman's terms please, how the disassociation of Chloramine can attribute to pH crash.

My hillybilly understanding of it, contradicts what Wright wrote, that Chloramine is lethal at higher pH. IIRC, my friend mentioned something like .... Chlorine and ammonia breaks down at lower pH, ammonia goes up, knocks off the bio-bacteria, ammonia rises even further and without a buffer, pH crashes. I just don't know how the components are inter-related.

It's up to the individual to adopt any school of thought, beliefs or preventive measures but personally, I'm not taking any chances.

*Please note that I am not endorsing any of the products mentioned or linked*

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## RonWill

Folks,
Almost a year ago, Wright wrote in *this post*, "_We should organize a group buy, I think. One complete test kit, so you see the color chart at least once, and several dropper bottles of the reagent so everyone can have his own test capability. You can find small test tubes, locally, I'm sure. The color chart is only for when you must know the concentration of chlorine. We should be able to send it to you for SG$20-30 and everyone could have a way to detect chloramine/chlorine_".

I'm tired of guessing. If Wright is up to it, is anyone else game?

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## RonWill

> Lamot (?) I think is the main manufacturer of the commercial reagents used


 BTW, Scott, I think you were referring to LaMotte.

Chlorine / Chloramine - LaMotte 6817, (Actually the LaMotte 680 Chlorine test with the 6817 refill. The DPD-2 tablets that come with the model 680 show total chlorine (unbound and bound, i.e. chloramine). The DPD-1 and DPD-3 tablets from the model 6817 refill kit show unbound and bound chlorine respectively using the same color chart as the model 680. The DPD-1 and DPD-2 tests are also good for detecting any residual ozone levels, if that is of interest.

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## whuntley

> snip...
> My hillybilly understanding of it, contradicts what Wright wrote, that Chloramine is lethal at higher pH. IIRC, my friend mentioned something like .... Chlorine and ammonia breaks down at lower pH, ammonia goes up, knocks off the bio-bacteria, ammonia rises even further and without a buffer, pH crashes. I just don't know how the components are inter-related.


Chloramine isn't lethal at high pH. I did not say that. Ammonium turns into ammonia at high pH and *that* can be lethal.

The chloramine, dissolved, breaks down into hypochloric and hydrochloric acid. That alone can cause a pH crash in poorly-buffered water, I suspect. Since that isn't an action on the part of an aquarist, I never even discussed it. Most water systems adjust their pH to meet local needs. In the US the EPA makes them add sodium hydroxide o/e to get the pH above 8 to prevent lead poisoning from etched solder in copper pipes.

The problem that fish shops and many Betta breeders suffered was in very-well-buffered water that had a high pH. In that case, use of hypo to sequester the chlorine broke the bond with ammonium and dumped straight ammonium into high-pH water. There is a rate equation that describes the percent of ammonium (NH4+, fairly harmless) that will be converted to ammonia (NH3 , very, very toxic at low levels -- a few ppb).

[It's the same deal as ionized chlorides are pretty harmless but dissolved chlorine is deadly.]

For a given amount of ammonium, initially, the amount that will convert to poisonous ammonia depends on pH and temperature. The latter is a minor effect, but the amount of ammonia at a pH of 7 becomes 50 times greater at a pH of 9. Below a pH of about 7.5, the ammonium is mostly just a good plant food. At 8 or above, breaking it off from chloramine can kill. Don't use the old-fashioned dechlor products or your fish can suffer. That's all I was saying. If you are certain the pH will stay at or below 7, you possibly can get away with it.

Again, it is the use of sodium thiosulfate (in products like Novaqua) to treat only the chlorine that becomes deadly when used on chloramine in high pH water. The chloramine is just a modest irritant to most fish until you do that. The burst of ammonia is what really kills.

HTH

Wright

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## timebomb

Ronnie,

I'm in touch with a friend who knows someone who works in a public swimming pool. When he finds out where we can get a proper test kit, I'll let you know. In the meantime, it's definitely not worth paying $200 just to convince me of the existence of chloramines in our water. I wouldn't pay that sort of money to convince myself  :Laughing: 

As for what you said, that - "Chloramine is difficult to measure quantitatively in low concentrations, and particularly when a combination of chlorine and chloramine are present", the officer from the PUB said they no longer use chlorine but only chloramine. 

Loh K L

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## whuntley

He is pulling your leg a bit, I suspect.

They don't actually use chloramine, normally. They add chlorine gas or sodium hypochlorite, and then add ammonia as gas or ammonium hydroxide and let the chloramine form in the water as they mix. Their intent is to get chloramine before it reaches your tap (or reacts with any organics in the pipes), but most water systems don't actually use chloramine as such at the input end.

What do you consider a proper test kit, KL? The cheapest chlorine test kit tells you as much as you want to know. It is definitely not accurate to three places on low-level chloramine, but, so what? When viewed against a bright white background, the amount of yellowing is a clear indication that there is enough chloramine to cause a problem and that remedial action is needed. You do not really care how much. You want to know if it is there, and the cheapest tests will detect about 0.1 ppm of chloramine if your eye discriminates the pale yellow from white reasonably well.

Either carbon filter the water under high line pressure (in tank charcoal filters are worse than worthless*) or use a good formaldehyde-type dechloraminator that is guaranteed to tie up *BOTH* the chlorine and the ammonium/ammonia.

Wright
____________________
*Low-pressure in-tank carbon filters have a wonderful ability to suddenly dump the unwanted material (such as ammonia) back into the tank when you least expect it. They should never be trusted for more than about 20 minutes, max. Even then, you need to know the exact history of the carbon. That is, it may already be loaded with bad stuff and ready to dump when another, more attractive, molecule comes along.

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## Scott_sg

Wright is absolutely correct, it is really a yes or no test. The actual amount there is not so important, unless you have some weird fish chemistry experiment going on. If there is none then good.

And my understanding of it was as Wright says, they kept the traditional chlorinating equipment at stations and simply added ammonia input systems so the chloramine is "made" at the station by mixing the two. Engineers are very cost conscious, even the civil engineers  :Wink:  so it is quite an easy and cheap change over for water utilities.

Ron correct, Lamotte is the company - my head is full of too much junk already to remember everything. But I was quite sure my spelling was wrong. My understanding of it is that they have some patented reagents to make testing simple, tablets and liquid. Most of the other companies use this in some form or another. If you had access to a lab they would use silver nitrate and stuff, but I think the test kits are cheap 20 or 30 bucks should be enough to test all the chlorine in as many different ways as you need.

BTW the lab supply companies are great places to look around for odds and ends. The only problem is these days that they can be pricey and there are more and more regulations. If you buy too much from them people will think you are either making drugs or bombs. I remember recently even reading somewhere that the sale of glassware to individuals in some states in the US is illegal now. And I suspect the lab my school friend and I set up under the house as a kid would be shut down right away now.  :Shocked:  

Scott.

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## timebomb

> What do you consider a proper test kit, KL?


I'm hoping to find one that can detect the slightest trace of chlorine, Wright. So far, I've already tested the tap water in several places in Singapore but the results were all negative. You said dosage depends on bacteria count. I do believe that's highly likely but I find it hard to believe my present test kit failed to detect even the slightest trace of chlorine anywhere. I carried out my latest test on the tap water of a friend who lives on the 2nd floor of a Condominium near the East Coast area. His water comes from the pipes below which means its not exposed to air. I thought the test kit would show some results but the solution didn't change colour. Either my test kit isn't sensitive enough or there's no chloramine. The guys who work in the public swimming pools should have better test kits and that's the reason I'm trying to get in touch with one.

I need to see proof. Everyone's saying there's chloramine in our tap water but without seeing the evidence, I can't accept that. I'm a skeptic, remember? I always take anecdotal evidence with a pinch of salt. And the truth is, that's the only thing we have so far.

Loh K L

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## whuntley

I heartily approve your skepticism. I have long been known for exploding aquarium myths, like "pH shock", etc. I belong to that religion, and am a full priest.

Let's just test your test kit. It probably uses exactly the same color dye that is used by every pool kit I have ever seen, even the big ones used by the pros. They measure total chlorine, using a single dropper solution. [They don't have time or need for the three-reagent chem-lab tests.]

Chlorine bleach does weaken with age, but it is very cheap, so go buy a small fresh bottle, making sure that it gives the percentage of sodium hypochlorite in solution (usually about 5 1/2% for full-strength bleach). Calculate how much to add to a large volume of water to make the 0.055 drop to 0.000001. That is about a 55,000:1 dilution. That would be, I think, 1ml in 55 liters. Stir a bit and measure. [An eyedropper squirt in a full bucket will do if you don't need hard numbers.]

Test and see if your kit indicates in the general neigborhood of 0.1 to 1 ppm of chlorine. Don't worry about accuracy, because sodium hypochlorite has a bigger molecular weight than chlorine and we are doing volume, not weight, so it will be way off. You just want to see if there is a detectable color shift when the drops are added and a known dose of chlorine is, for sure, present.

I suggest a white piece of paper behind the tube and direct sunlight for this test, for the yellow tinting should be very faint indeed.

If nothing is detected, your test solution is probably dead. Try adding more chlorine bleach, in measured amounts to see how much has to be added for the yellow tint to appear in subsequent tests. That will give you a strong indication of how bad your test kit really is, if it is out of date. Take it back and complain if you prove it was faulty.

I never use the kits from the LFS, because they store them improperly, and even leave them hanging in bright fluorescent lights or sunlight, sometimes for years. They charge $10 for a tiny bit of reagent, where the regular pool kits turn over fast in the hardware stores and you get many times as much test solution that is fresher and far, far cheaper. I have never paid more than US$1 (plus tax) for a full ounce of test solution at Home Depot. That does hundreds of tests, even at double strength to increase sensitivity.

Most water engineers seem to think they need a chloramine level testing between about 0.5 and 2 ppm total chlorine to get safe bacterial elimination. If you have much less than that, it is a) because there are not enough bacteria to warrant treatment, or b) your water is being subsequently filtered to remove it in your storage tanks.

In the old days, many apartment buildings did install carbon filters, because the chlorine could be tasted in the water. Chloramine, because it doesn't evolve chlorine gas, is quite tasteless, but the filters may still be in use. If so, and if they are changed regularly, you are home free and you don't need to worry. Test anyway, from time to time, for a forgotten filter change could destroy a lot of precious eggs. [Also, building management may discover the taste is gone and quit filtering the water!]

Wright

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## timebomb

Will do, Wright but I can't do it now. It will have to wait until tomorrow. A bottle of fresh bleach is cheap but the problem is I can't buy one or the wife will hit the roof. She sells bleach, you see and it's her company policy that if it's something she sells, we're not allowed to purchase it from other shops. If you find this perplexing, let me relate a story my late mother used to tell.

In the old days, in China where every other person was a farmer, fertilisers were hard to come by. So one of the main sources for fertiliser was human waste. There were no flush toilets then and human waste was collected in buckets, later to be used as fertilisers on the farm. Don't go "yucks". That was life in the old days. My mother said human waste was considered so precious no one, no matter how urgently he needed to go, will ever do his business in another person's toilet. If necessary, they will run miles just to do it at home. In other words, better in my own toilet than in yours. I guess my wife still has the old China mentality  :Laughing: 

Loh K L

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## timebomb

Sorry for the delay, folks but something came up yesterday which left me no time to conduct the test.

Anyway, the swimming pool guy called but he wasn't of any help. Their test kits are issued to them by the sports council and he has no idea where I could buy one. So I asked around and Edward said to try Kitchener complex.
I went there this afternoon and came home with this:


Looks like a real test kit, doesn't it? It's made in Italy and is good until the July of 2010. Don't ask me how much it costs. It's nowhere close to the $200 Ronnie mentioned but it's a lot more than the Sera one.

Here's what's inside the box:


I'm supposed to fill up the vial with 5 ml of water and add 5 drops of reagent 1 (Sodium Hydroxide) and 3 drops of reagent 2 (Sulphuric acid).
So I tested my tap water and this is the result:


As you can see, the solution has turned a slight pink which means the result is positive. But the colour falls below the 0.5 mg/l range bar which means the chlorine content in my tap water is somewhere between 0 to 0.5 mg/l. Alright then, it's confirmed there's chlorine in our tap water although the concentration is very low. But how good is the test kit? How sensitive is it?

I decided to carry out what Wright suggested but I ran into problems. First of all, the largest pail I can find in my house is only about 15 litres. For something larger, I will have to use a fish tank. I have many tanks but they are setup as aquariums so I can't use them. I also found it impossible to accurately measure 1 ml of bleach. One ml is so small in volume it's very hard to tell if the measurement is accurate. I wasn't going for high accuracy but then I didn't want to be too "way-off" either.

So this is what I did instead. I filled up the bucket with tap water and did a calculation. Volume of a cylinder is area of circle times height, right? I hope I haven't forgetten my maths. The average radius of my pail is about 13 cm and the water was filled to a height of 26 cm. My answer is 13.8 litres. My math sucks just as much as my chemistry so if I got it wrong, please let me know.


I then added one drop (just one drop) of fresh bleach to the water in the pail using my turkey baster.


I checked and it takes about 20 drops from my turkey baster to fill up the measuring cup to 2 ml of water. In other words, one drop is about 0.1 ml. Right?


I then stirred the water with my hands. I was careful not to contaminate the water in the pail so I washed my hands thoroughly before doing the stirring. I then filled up the vial with 5 ml of this "bleach" water and ran the test. Here is the result:


The kit was able to detect the chlorine although I added only one drop of bleach. If you look closely at the above picture, you should be able to see a dark red dot somewhere in the middle of the vial, on the left. I think it's a precipitate. 

Anyway, this is how I figure the maths:

1 ml per 1 litre = 1 ppm
For ease of calculation, I will round off the volume of water in the pail to 10 litres. If it's so,

1 ml per 10 litres = 0.1 ppm

But I added only one drop of bleach and 10 drops make one ml. So

0.1 ml per 10 litres = 0.01 ppm

If I got the maths right, it would mean the test kit is sensitive enough to detect a concentration lower than 0.01 ppm of chlorine. Great kit, huh? What remains now is to find out if it's chloramine and not chlorine. So I filled up a jar with water and I'll let it stand for 24 hours. 


I'll post the result tomorrow. Hope I have time to do this as I'm leaving for a short vacation on Friday morning. 

By the way, I was stumped when the girl at Kitchener complex asked me if I wanted to test for free chlorine or total chlorine. Damn, I thought, how the hell would I know the difference?  I looked at her catalogue and this is what it says:

*Chlorine is the most commonly used water disinfectant in applications that vary from treatment of drinking water and wastewater, pool and spa sanitization, to food processing and sterilization. Chlorine present in water binds with bacteria, leaving only a part of the original quantity (free chlorine) to continue its disinfecting action. If the free chlorine leve is improper with respect to Ph, water will have an unpleasant taste and odour and the disinfecting potential of the chlorine will be diminished.

Free chlorine reacts with ammonium ions and organic compounds to form chlorine compounds resulting in diminished disinfecting capabalities compared with free chlorine. Chlorine compounds together with chloramines form combined chlorine. Combined chlorine and free chlorine together result in total chlorine. While free chlorine has a much higher disinfectant potential, combined chlorine has a higher stability and a lesser volatility.* 

Damn if I know what the 2 paragraphs mean. All I want to know is "will it kill my fish? Anyway, I "eeny meeny miney more" and decided to take the "free chlorine" test kit. The test kit isn't free, mind you. Only the chlorine is  :Laughing: 

Loh K L

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## whuntley

I thought the whole idea was to test your Sera kit that has been indicating zero chlorine/chloramine all over town.  ::smt006: 

With all due respect, KL, your overnight test may not be very accurate. 24 hours of vigorous aeration is needed to dissipate chlorine completely. If you used distilled water in the bucket, your test was probably OK. It looked to me like you said you used tap water but that already gave you a low reading with the Hanna kit, and is very likely to contain some chloramine. What are you testing? The drop of chlorox or the (probable) chloramine in the tap water?

If you just let it stand (and it has no chloramine), there would be significant chlorine left, which you might then mistake for chloramine.

Put an airstone in the jar, if you want the measurement to indicate chloramine (but you should start with pure distilled water if you want to see if your one-drop bleach concentration goes away).

Also, run the new kit on some distilled water just to be sure that low reading goes away at 0 ppm chlorine. It might just have a minimum pink level and you could be fooled into thinking the test was positive for chloramine or chlorine.

Wright

PS. I killed some Nothos once, because I didn't know this. Just standing doesn't really get rid of all the chlorine. It really needs an airstone.

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## timebomb

> I thought the whole idea was to test your Sera kit that has been indicating zero chlorine/chloramine all over town.


That was my intention but after I bought the new test kit which I thought was better, I felt it wasn't very useful to check my Sera test kit. Did you notice I said "thought was better"? Anyway...

I was in Ronnie's house last night so I offered to check his water. Ronnie has a pail which he uses to store water. He isn't sure how long the water has been in there but he thinks it could be a few days. There's no aeration but the pail is constantly covered with a lid. We ran the test but the hour was late and it was dark in his corridor. We brought the test kid to his living room and placed it against a white background but we couldn't tell if there's a colour change for sure. Ronnie thought he saw a slight tinge of pink but the solution appeared colourless to me. I asked Ronnie to use his camera to take a picture as I thought the result would be clearer in a monitor. I haven't heard from Ronnie yet but I brought the sample home last night and didn't think much about it until just now when I took out the test kit. Here's a picture of Ronnie's tap water, taken with my own camera:


As you can see, the solution has turned dark pink. It's obvious the chlorine or chloramine content in Ronnie's water is very high. 

I then decided to check on the water which I left in a jar yesterday. It's been standing for 24 hours now. Wright thinks the chlorine or chloramine won't disappear if the water has not been vigorously aerated but it's too late to do that now. When I have more time after my vacation, I'll try what Wright said. In the meantime, this is the result:

The solution has turned a very slight pink so I began to wonder. Could it be, as what Wright had said, the test kit shows a minimum pink level even if there's no chlorine or chloramine in the water? In other words, does it always show a positive result which is quite the opposite of the Sera kit which throws up negative results all the time? Well, there was only one way to find out. 

So I went and bought a bottle of distilled water from the Watson's store below my block. 


I ran the test using distilled water and this is the result:


The solution has turned a slight pink!! Dang!! So Wright's right again. Can't the guy be wrong for once? I tell you, I'll throw a party and give everyone a treat the day someone manages to prove him wrong  :Laughing:  But hold on a minute, a thought suddenly occurred to me. Could it be the reflection from the colour strip that's causing us to see pink all the time? I asked my maid and my daughter. They looked at the solution and they both agreed it's colourless. The pink is an illusion, they both say. It's caused by the light reflected from the colour strip. I can't say the same for my daughter who wears thick glasses but I know for a fact that my maid has near perfect, or perfect eyesight. If she says it's there, you can bet your bottom dollar it will be there. If she says it isn't there, don't bother to look. But the skeptic in me trusts no one  :Smile: 

So I washed the kit thoroughly and added in tap water. This time, however, I didn't run the test. In other words, nothing was added to the sample. I placed it in the same spot where I took the earlier pictures and snapped the picture. Here's the result:


As you can see, there's no reflection. The solution is what it should be, colourless - That's why you mustn't believe everything others say  :Laughing:  

To sum it up, what have I found out so far? Not very much, I'm afraid. I'm sure there's quite a high concentration of either chlorine or chloramine in Ronnie's tap water but is there any in mine? I don't know because all the results were positive. Even the distilled water turned a slight tinge of pink. Sigh, it looks like we're back to square one. The shop that sells the Hanna test kit also sells electronic kits but they are expensive, in the region of $200 each. I'm a skeptic but I'm also a scrooge. I would prefer to spend that sort of money on something else. Does anyone have a better idea?

By the way, I had more time to go over the maths and I realised I made a terrible mistake. It should have been:

1 mg per 1 litre = 1 ppm and not 1 ml per 1 litre = 1 ppm.

1 ml is 1000 mg which would mean, one drop of bleach in a pail of 10 litres of water is about 10 ppm of chlorine content, assuming the bleach is pure chlorine. That's quite shocking to me really. One drop seems such a small amount and I find it hard to believe the resulting concentration will kill anything in a fish tank. But that gives me an idea for another experiment. I'll drop a drop of bleach into one of my fish tanks and see if the fish dies as a result of it. But all that will have to wait until next week. 

Till then guys, chow. 

Loh K L

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## RonWill

Oh Bloviator... yoo hooo... wisdom in larger dosage needed  :Laughing:  

Here's what the test scale showed last night. It may be dark but it's there  :Crying:  


I wonder if the test result is relative to bent spinal anomalies  :Shocked:

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## whuntley

First, I don't usually care about color exact matching for quantitative results, as I'm usually concerned with the binary question, "Present or not present?"

You need a very bright and very white back light, but for tests like the Hanna, where colored transmissive references are provided, the white background needs to be several inches away from the tube, to be less influenced by light passing through the reference side and reflecting back through the sample.

In my years of owning swimming pools (I had two in an earlier life) I just held the tubes up to the sky to get a measurement. Yes, it is a bit blue, but it is still mostly white. It worked OK when I did want to know the numbers to know how much chlorine to add. Sunlight against white paper was even more accurate.

My artist wife could glance at the pool and tell by its color when chlorine was low. I couldn't tell what she saw and she could not describe it. When I tested, she was never wrong. Maybe she detected an algae start that was below my threshold, IDK?

It looks like the Hanna test is very slow to develop and has a lousy zero point, which pool-maintenance folks wouldn't like. I strongly prefer the kind of test that turns the water yellow when chlorine is present. It is sensitive to chloramine (combined as well as free chlorine) and the color develops in a minute or less. It is very cheap and is about as sensitive as anything you can afford to use at home. I always could see a chlorine reading of 0.5 ppm and much less than that got questionable. Maybe I could see 0.1 ppm at double strength.

Be cautious about trusting cameras to detect pink. Some have more agressive IR filters than others, so any test using longer-wavelength colors won't repeat well from one camera to another. Use the yellow test to avoid the ends of the spectrum [Also about 20% of males cannot clearly see the color of the Hanna test, so it is only useful for women who have a far lower incidence of color blindness.  :Very Happy: ]

Wright

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## timebomb

Wright,

I'll see if I can get the test kit you mentioned but over here, hardly any aquarist ever tests for chlorine so such test kits are a bit hard to find. In fact, I asked many fish shop owners and none has ever tested for chlorine in their tap water. The swimming pool guys use electronic ones which are far too expensive for me. When I have time, I'll visit a store that sells laboratory equipment. They could possibly have one for chlorine.

Loh K L

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## Scott_sg

Just to throw another spanner in the works... While waiting at the library today, I was browsing through some old Scientific American Magazines. Anyway there was a short piece on Chloramines. Essentially one of the problems that is happening is that with the old chlorination system all the heavy metals in the piping were eliminated due to the rapid oxidation of the metals.
For example lead piping forms a nice layer of lead oxide, this tends to keep the lead out of the water supply. Now with chloramines the oxides quickly break down allowing heavy metals to dissolve into the water. In Washington DC, the water had a lead content of over 300 parts per billion. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) over there in the states has a safety limit of less than 15 parts per billion. So the heavy metal levels are very high. In this case lead, but probably all the other nasty ones also that are used for the welding and brazing and so on.
Apparently there is some law coming in over there saying that water companies have to lower there direct chlorination levels to satisfy the EPA, but the water companies were complaining that in doing so they will then be breaching the EPA limits on heavy metals. 
I doubt this really will cause problems for the average fish, although if I still kept marine animals I would be more concerned, but still if your fish starts to show classic signs of heavy metal poisoning - lack of concentration, blurred vision and trouble learning, then you will know what the problem is.
It would also depend very much on your local area and the age of the network used I assume.
Incidentally it also went on to say that a lot of the chemistry is currently unknown, and that at the time 30% of the US system was using chloramines.
The article was in Scientific American July 2004 for anyone who is interested.

Scott

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## whuntley

I missed that article, Scott, and I unfortunately don't keep old Scientific Americans around.

The chemistry isn't at all mysterious. The chlorination of water typically doesn't do much to the pH. Adding ammonia gas (rather than ammonium hydroxide) to form chloramines can produce acidic compounds, lowering pH, and the lead and copper oxides are very poor protection at low pH. As a result, the EPA long-ago mandated the addition of alkaline materials to get the pH up toward 8 or above, to minimize the heavy metal etching. [Simple sodium hydroxide is often used where ammonia gas is the chloraminating agent.]

The persistence of the high pH depends highly on how well buffered the water was originally. In hard-water areas, the water usually has some reasonable level of KH and is buffered high by that. In soft-water areas, the CO2 in the atmosphere can drop the pH significantly upon aeration, because the sodium hydroxide provides no buffering at all. That is OK, as long as the pH was high while it was inside the old copper pipes.

The mandated high pH had an unfortunate side-effect for fish. Many folks had an unreasonable faith in their old dechlorination products and continued to use them after chloramine came in. Hypo breaks the bond between chlorine and ammonium. High pH turns that harmless plant food, ammonium, to the deadly ammonia. Most of the worst fish kills were in hard-water areas, where the pH stayed high, and 100% water changes were routine. I know of many in soft-water areas who continue to use hypo to treat their chloramine and see no damage as a result.

If you wish to understand some of this chemistry, try to find a copy of the out-of-print book by Spotte, Fish and Invertebrate Culture _"Water Management in Closed Systems"_ Wiley-Interscience 1970 ISBN 0 471 81760 0. His explanations and references are simply excellent.

Wright

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## Scott_sg

Thanks for that Wright, I will keep an eye out for the book. I have a definite preference for the older texts anyway, more substance and less pretty pictures- and a tenth of the price if that.
I think in the article what they were referring to about the chemistry being unknown is really about all of the various interactions with chloramines and different metals etc at an academic level, which electrons are going where and so on. But then again the average academic could learn a lot from a plumber (but none would admit it). 
Although from memory the chemistry (or more physics i guess) of ammonia itself is more complex than the average freshman would realise. I remember vaguely doing some calculations on how fast it oscillates or something a long time ago in physics, but that is useless in any everyday practical sense  :Wink: 

Scott

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## stormhawk

Did some tests on my water with the Hanna kit from KL and I promised to post up pics so here it is.



I can't judge the results, what do you guys think is the chlorine level for my tap water ? I reckon its in the 1.0 mg/L range.

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## whuntley

I would never attempt a quantitative reading from a photo. Cameras can be very deceptive, particularly in red.

OTOH, the chlorine/chloramine level is plenty high enough to kill Nothos outright, and will almost certainly do damage to most other small fish.

Wright

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## Scott_sg

Looks high to me, but I have not tested for years. I just save myself the hassle and buy a blue bottle that treats chloramine.  :Wink: 

Scott.

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## whuntley

That's fine, Scott, if you are not breeding fish. All the useful dechloraminators resemble formaldehyde, and will kill off all the useful infusoria. [I suspect they also quickly kill bbs. ]

That forced me, in Fremont, to switch to in-line carbon filters when they went to chloramine. My infusoria came back and it was more important for giving babies a good start than I had realized, before.

Wright

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## Scott_sg

Hmmm ok another long smart a** answer coming - bound to irritate lots of you  :Wink:  , but for anyone interested in the water their fish are in, it is probably worth reading. Anyway it has been quiet here lately so this should stir some of you up.

There is really way too much panic about this whole thing, not to mention the myths that are surrounding it.
Yes Chlorine is bad, Ammonia is bad, Chlorine + Ammonia = Chloramine is bad. Unfortunately some of the stuff you are adding to your tanks is bad if not worse.

Most fish keeping is really just common sense with some high school chemistry and biology. I have no doubts at all that most dechloraminators will kill off infusoria and probably anything else that gets in the way for the simple reason that most are crap.

A little research shows that most of them actually cheat, essentially even when they say they are dechloraminators, what "most" comprise of is Sodium thiosulphate - the old standby, add a stress coat such as polyvinylpyrrolidone and a buffer such as tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane. Which all sounds impressive but is really not doing much other than trying to solve the problem after the fact. So yes any thiosulphate based solution will not really help.

Most dechloraminators actually just treat the initial problems caused by the chlorine and ammonia, or at least try and minimise it, thiosulphate for the chlorine and a stress coat for the fish, and a buffer to stop ph swings.

The more reputable companies start to use sodium based compounds. Without mentioning names... but essentially they also divert one problem to somewhere else. And they still cheat in a way by using sodium thiosulphate to deal with the chorine released - hypochlorites. 

One of the main ones uses 

HOCH2SO3Na - sodium hydroxymethanesulfonate

but as far as I know they are all similar,Sodium Hydroxymethane sulfinic acid from another, and one uses a "trade secret" based on an aliphatic amine ( an amine is essentially NH2 ), so they are all similar. In fact chemistry (and biology) dictates that they must all be similar to a degree. 

Ok so this stuff essentially drops the sodium and reacts with chloramine by stripping the ammonia off it, this leaves free chlorine - chloride ions - then hypochlorites that react with the thiosulphates. 

Cl2 +WY20 <-> HoCl + H +Col
HOCl + 2SA2oe3(2-)-> Col(-) +S4oe6(2-)+OH(-)

So that is the chlorine ok for now. (But you still have sulphate based ions)
The Ammonia part is:

NH3 + HOOCH2SO3(-) -> NA2NACHO2SO3(-) + WY20

This just says ammonia plus sodium hydroxymethanesulfonate gives aminomethanesulphate and water.

So that all sounds ok, but there are more problems. Now your water has no chlorines or ammonia but you do have sulphates and ammonia complexes. Essentially this is ok, but now bacteria will start,

_Nitrosomonas sap_. will convert the ammonia conjugates into nitrites - this is bad in general and more toxic than the original ammonia. Also it is not really clear how well the bacteria handle the bound ammonia in this case. But they use the ammonia and carbon dioxide to form nitrite. Technically it is an obligate chemo-lithoautotroph, which means it eats inorganic chemicals and fixes carbon itself.

(Incidentally nitrates/nitrites etc will bind with any free sodium, helping explain why adding salt can be beneficial.Unfortunately they also bind with hemoglobin causing the fish to suffocate - brown gills.)
_
Nitrobacter sap._ will then convert nitrite into nitrate which is much less toxic but plants can at least use it. So this is just the basic nitrogen cycle.

So all looks good so far, but we have forgot about the bits left over such as suphates/sulphides methanes etc.

For the sulphates, Sulphate reducing bacteria will convert all the sulphates into the end product H2SA, these are anaerobic bacteria - that is no oxygen. And gives the familiar rotten egg smell. The stuff is also very toxic, probably worse than any of the above. There is a sulphur cycle in the environment similar to the nitrogen cycle. 

The methane oxidising bacteria (Methanotrophs) convert methane into methanol - simple alcohol. Which is generally not good but will evaporate away or break down eventually some into formaldehyde i think, which again I doubt is helping your water.

SO what are the lessons? 

Simple, you don't get something for nothing. In trying to change your tap water you are adding a host of other things. And the above was the very simple description.
Testing for chlorines or chloramines is pretty much silly, no modern country would have unprocessed water, and the average test kit will not give any real quantative answer that is going to help.

All of the so called dechlorinators have major trade offs, with some being better than others but most being simply junk and good marketing. When you add something to your water it cannot magically make something else ie chlorine/chloramine vanish without leaving something behind.

If you have ever smelt your dechlor, and it smelt like rotten eggs, now you know why ( and definitely don't use it if it smells bad - they should all have an almost sweet smell if good). 

If you are shipping fish it makes sense to add extra, in your tanks you need to consider the end products that will build up over time. H2SA is probably the worst of all. You also need to consider suitable biological filtration, different bacteria have different requirements. 

For example I would not use sulphates in an aquarium with a deep substrate, this is asking for hydrogen sulphide problems.

Like Wright says, the best thing of all to deal with the problem is good carbon filtration, but make sure you use good "activated" carbon and keep it fresh.

I normally add some carbon filtered water for top ups from a separate tank running a simple box filter with activated carbon. So I use this with treated water to minimise byproducts. Treating all my water with activated carbon is beyond my budget. Again it really depends on what I am trying to do. Sometimes I will actually use straight tap water if I want to add some disinfectant properties to a tank. Sometimes absolutely nothing other than carbon filtered water, or when I lived in rural areas rain water. Lots of ways to do things. 

Plants are also a good natural way of chemical filtration to a degree.

I use some dechlorinator/chloramine but sparingly and depending on what I am planning to do. But most of my tanks have no substrate so Hydrogen sulphide is not a problem (aerobic conditions), but I would guess that over time sulphates will keep building up in the water if some form of chemical filtration is not used. I have no idea what effect high concentrations would do, but I doubt it is good.

I would also suggest not mixing brands since that is really going to turn your aquarium into a lab experiment water wise. 

So those are pretty much the facts on current water conditioners. Now you can all make up your own minds on how you will deal with it.

If some of it is wrong then so be it, but that is the general principles behind it all. 

Scott.

"You cannot get something for nothing"


PS. 
I actually went and hunted down the ingredients used by all the major manufacturers where possible. As with most things marketing and ignorance go a very long way.

PSS. All my fish of legal age are breeding happily  :Smile:

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## whuntley

The ingredients in Amquel are patented, so they are publically available. It is sodium hydroxymethanesulfonate, so your description is basically correct. The truly effective dechloraminators like Amquel, Prime and Ammo Lock 2 are all similar, with minor chemical tinkering to get around the sodium hydroxymethanesulfonate patent on Amquel. Prime and Ammo Lock 2 are less stable than Amquel, so I avoid them. Smell an old bottle of Prime some time. It is way more concentrated, but I suspect that is needed to maintain a stable product.

I have thoroughly tested the above three, and find that they do a fine job, but do kill infusoria, mosquito larvae, Daphnia and even Ostracods! I once ran out of formaldehyde, and successfully used Amquel to kill Hydra! 

Good activated carbon filters last quite a long time (many months). To be sure they are not dumping any chloramine into your tanks, use two in series with a tap between. Once a month, do a chlorine test at the tap to see if there is any "punch through" in the first filter. When that starts, replace cartridge #1 with #2 (which is basically unused) and put a new cartridge in place of #2. The second cartridge just acts as a safety net, so no chloramine gets to your outlet water. Your total cartridge use is actually less, because you need not replace an almost full cartridge. Run water through at a slow trickle, for chlorine, ammonium, and chloramine are only very weakly adsorbed by carbon. It needs a long contact time to be effective.

Final note: "Amquel" is a trade name owned by Novalek/Kordon. Amquel Plus is not the same thing. IMO, the jury is still out on its effectiveness. Read about water conditioners at http://www.novalek.com/kpd79.htm.

Wright

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## TyroneGenade

FYI: nitrite does not bind to heamoglobin, it oxidizes the iron center in the compound from Fe(II) to Fe(III). In this form it cannot bind O2 at all. Methylene blue can reverse this oxidation (supposedly), but also aids as an O2 carrier by itself.

Nitrate can also react with heamoglobin but not as easily as nitrite. The problem with high nitrate is that the bacteria in the gut of the fish use the nitrate as an electron sink and convert it to nitrite which can then react with heamoglobin. Big fish are more prone to this than small fish that have a shorter and smaller gut.

This is the info as it stands to the best of my knowledge. Use it at our own peril.

tt4n

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## Scott_sg

Wright, Tyrone,
I am glad my little thesis only has minimal errors and passed both of you without too many problems.  :Wink: 
With all your Biochem Tyrone, if all you can get me for is the nitrite/ nitrate I am pleased. But thanks for clearing that up.  :Very Happy:  

What really got me thinking was more from a physicists point of view in that you cannot remove something without adding something in a simplistic sense. I think the whole water conditioner market tends to ignore what is left over.

In no way would I suggest that people don't use water conditioners, but like everything if you know the background behind it then everyone can make informed choices and decisions.

But definitely the top 2 or 3 brands seem to have a huge jump in quality over the others. So I would keep that in mind when buying.

And for sensitive fish I would be even more careful in using the stuff, for any situation where I was getting lots of minor problems I would definitely add more carbon filtration. 

Anyway I am glad I did do that little bit of research since some of it surprised me, and some of what I found out shocked me  :Shocked:  

Hope it is useful to someone out there.

Scott.

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## timebomb

Sorry for digging out an old thread. 

Wright sent a test kit and it arrived 2 days ago. I immediately ran a test on my tap water but no visible results showed up. I tried again yesterday but still nothing. If there's chloramine in our water, the levels in which they are present are too low to be detectable by our test kits, that's all I can say.





Loh K L

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## RonWill

> If there's chloramine in our water, the levels in which they are present are too low to be detectable by our test kits...


 Our mains are not served by just one but a few waterworks, so results may vary. Nonetheless, even if the level of CL remains negligible, it pays to be careful.

Call me paranoid but here's mine; 3-module (1sediment/2carbon) runs permanently and when my wife saw the gunk in the filters, she insisted on one for the home. There's limited space in the john and will relocate the 4-module rig under the basin [when I receive the tuits!]


I quit using anti-chloramine a long time ago nor do I now worry over 100% water changes. The killies are healthy and even when I've stopped breeding them, fry and juvenile can be seen darting around hiding amongst moss. [The _striatum_ and *loennbergii* are still reluctant to do anything tho]

Long story short. The benefits may be subtle and not tangible. Being convinced by test results is no reason to overlook swapping new carbon filters. On the other hand, if you think the rig is nothing but a white elephant taking up space and wanting to rid it, let me know and I'll find a new home for it.

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## whuntley

> Sorry for digging out an old thread. 
> 
> Wright sent a test kit and it arrived 2 days ago. I immediately ran a test on my tap water but no visible results showed up. I tried again yesterday but still nothing. If there's chloramine in our water, the levels in which they are present are too low to be detectable by our test kits, that's all I can say.
> 
> 
> Loh K L


All this proves is that your tap water has little chlorine/chloramine, today.

Most municipal water systems do a periodic test for coliform bacteria. As long as the level is well below some threshold (defined as "safe"), they don't need to spend money adding chloramine. As soon as that threshold is reached, usually due to changes in rain pattern, but sometimes from other influences, they will start to add chloramine in quantities to keep you safe (usually 0.5-3 ppm).

If your water district will not send you an e-mail when they start to add it, you need to test often enough to determine the pattern for your source of water. That is, you need to know when to test. Until then, I'd be inclined to check any time I made a major water change or filled new tanks. Other than that, a weekly check of the tap water should be all you need to eventually determine seasonal effects (if any).

The kit I sent has adequate sensitivity. Most fish are not bothered much by levels of 1 ppm. Only Nothos, IME, are killed at that level. They seem less tolerant than species with a slower metabolism. I do not know if this is all Nothos, or only those species I have wiped out that way.

Wright

PS. I do detect a tinge of yellow, in your pics. It looks like about 0.1-0.3 ppm. I certainly would not use it on babies, at that level. It could be a lighting artifact or something else in the photo process. I have to use a strong light and a dead white background (refrigerator, sheet of typing paper, o/e) immediately behind the tube to detect levels lethal to babies. Sometimes I double the drops to increase sensitivity. Halve the test chart amounts if you do that.

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## timebomb

You sure about the tinge, Wright? I couldn't see it. The solution looked clear as tapwater when I held the test kit up to a light. 

I'll keep checking to see if it throws up a visible result. So far, I've not seen a positive result. Not once. It takes only once to convince me though. A visible result is important to me because I don't want to be like that guy they found yelling at the top of his lungs in the park. Asked why, he replies that such a procedure keeps rogue elephants away. But, counters his questioner, there are no elephants around here for a thousand miles! See how well it works? is the triumphant reply.  :Laughing: 

Loh K L

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## whuntley

> You sure about the tinge, Wright? I couldn't see it. The solution looked clear as tapwater when I held the test kit up to a light. 
> 
> Loh K L


I can never detect low levels by holding up to a light. It has to be held against a diffuse white surface, with a strong light shining through it to see levels much below 0.5 ppm. I use sunlight or a big halogen lamp (100W or more).

The tinge I see could be from the yellow cap. The other side has a faint pink tinge, I think. I'd switch the caps or leave them off for the reading. You want the difference between the tube contents and the nearby white reference. The caps could confuse that.

It is important to have the light pass through the solution and immediately reflect back through it to get some sensitivity. White appliances, like refrigerators, ceramic bathroom fixtures and white bond typing paper (printer?) are all good backings, but they should be right up against the tube to be of any use at all. If they are way behind the tube, sensitivity seems to drop a lot.

May be my old eyes, but I could never see subtle tint difference like my 2nd wife could. She was an artist and obviously saw ranges of colors beyond my grasp. I finally quit testing the swimming pool for chlorine, when she said it was needed. She apparently could detect the tiny color change when algae were starting back. I only measured to be sure I added enough, because she was alway right when it got too low.

Wright

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