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Water Treatments - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly


RD.
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Smelly fish, would love to see a link that says that Calgary uses chloramine. As I only age my water and do not use water conditioner, I do have a concern if we are using chloramine. So if you could oblige me with the information, that would be great!!

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Yes, when did Calgary start using chloramines? That stuff is deadly and I use API Tap Water Conditioner, which breaks down chloramines but doesn't nutralize ammonia. I have healthy biological filtration, but the last thing I want is for my fish to be subjected to ammonia for even 20 seconds! That being said, I change 50 - 75% H2O in all my tanks every week and I smell the chlorine coming out of the tap, but after I declorinate it I smell water only and no ammonia.

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  • 3 months later...

Seachem prime is the solution to your problem. Edmonton has almost .50ppm ammonia in the tap water..

Prime is extremely very concentrated at a dose of 1mL/10gallons

It neutralizes nearly 1ppm ammonia to ammonium at that dose for 48 hours. Plenty of time for the biofilter to eat it up.

Can be used up to 5x normal dose in an emergency ammonia or nitrite spike

Edited by ridethespiral
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  • 3 years later...

Hey Neil,

I am curious what your experience with Seachem Safe has been.

I started using a water conditioner years ago as I have more tanks now and having buckets of water around the house dechlorinating is not something my wife approves of. I have been using Prime for many years and have been very happy with this product. However recently considered trying the Seachem product Safe as I have a couple larger tanks and felt this would be more cost effective in the long term.

I tried this product the other night when doing a water change on my 125 gallon tank. I changed about 40-50 gallons of water. With the Prime I would add 0.5 to 0.7 mL for a 5 gallon bucket. With the Safe it is so concentrated I opted to add it directly to the aquarium. I decided to add 1/2 a tsp which should treat 100 gallons of water as I was adding to whole tank volume. I added this prior to adding water.

A couple of days later I notice the water is cloudy and there is a dead fish. I test my water and discover my NH3/NH4+ is 0.25-0.5 ppm. My nitrites are 0.25-0.5 ppm and my nitrates are ~10 ppm. I don't routinely test my nitrogen cycle but haven't had NH3/NH4+ or N02 anytime in the last couple years. The tank was cycled and has been up and running for 5 years.

The confounding factor is that I also decided to treat a black beard algae problem that I have been battling. Just received all these chemicals in a recent mail order. I had read that double dosing with Flourish Excel kills bba.

Now I am not sure if the Seachem Prime treatment or the Flourish Excel caused the spike in ammonia and nitrite. I doubt it was the single dead fish. Did I undertreat with Seachem Prime? Should I have used 3/4 teaspoon? Or did the 25 capfuls of Flourish Excel factor in? I treated a smaller tank with twice the recommend treatment of Flourish Excel post water change using Prime and had no spike in ammonia or nitrites.

I am a little reluctant now to the try the Safe again. I did a 40 gallon water change with Prime after discovering the ammonia and nitrite spike.

Has anyone else had a similar experience using Seachem Safe and/or Flourish Excel?

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Sorry for your loss not familiar with SC Safe, but dealing with BBA using SC Excel I only follow directions on the bottle 5ml per 10 gallons after a > 40% WC + 5ml per 50 gallon per day after has always been enough to do in the BBA & hair algae in my 75 gallon.Was also very successful following the above in dealing with a crazy BBA out break in a 20 gallon Multi tank it was growing on everything turned pink with in 24 hrs. began to fall apart shortly after.Double dosing was not necessary in my case.

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I decided to add 1/2 a tsp which should treat 100 gallons of water as I was adding to whole tank volume. I added this prior to adding water.

I don't know what your chlorine/chloramine levels are, but here in Red Deer they are 2ppm, or 2 mg/l. (chloramine)

Seachem states; Chlorine: use 5 g (1 tsp.*) to each 1625 L (450 gallons*) of tap water (removes 4 ppm).

Chloramine: use 5 g (1 tsp.*) to each 1250 L (300 gallons*) of tap water (removes 4 ppm).

Ammonia: use 5 g (1 tsp.*) to each 400 L (100 gallons*) of tap water (removes 4 ppm). Do not overdose!

So as an example, if one's tap water has a level of 2ppm chlorine, half a teaspoon will treat approx 450 gallons of tap water. At 2ppm of chloramine, half a teaspoon would treat 300+ gallons of tap water.

Even at 4ppm you would have been overdosing @ 1/2 tsp per 100 gallons, and I'm quite certain that the chlorine or chlormine level in Cochrane is far below 4ppm. From what I can gather Cochrane uses chlorine and UV for disinfecting their water, so I would attempt to find out what level of chlorine they typically use throughout the year (lowest-highest) and then base your level of Safe on the high range. You could also test your tap water for chlorine residual. Here's a link to the town contact info.

http://www.cochrane.ca/municipal/toc/webcms.nsf/AllDoc/155CA75D9AD6A36C872576FE0075A25F?OpenDocument

FYI - Safe and Prime are made up from the same type of hydrosulphide salts, the only difference is that Safe is in a dry form, which is much more concentrated. Prime has water and a stabilizing agent added to the salts, that's basically the only chemical difference between the two.

Your problem could possibly be from an overdose of Safe, or an overdose coupled with the Flourish Excel. I honestly have no idea.

I've been using Safe for years without any issues.

Edited by RD.
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Thanks for the reply RD,

I believe Cochrane now receives some of its water from Calgary. I don't think they have the capacity any longer to meet Cochrane's demands. Either way the water is probably not treated with chloramine. It seems I had a bit of a bump in my ammonia and nitrites that quickly resolved after a second water change two days later. This would lead me to think that maybe I undertreated my tap water and the chlorine knocked out some of my biological filter. How would overdosing with Safe cause a spike in ammonia?

I appreciate your insight and experience with this product. I actually read the rather lengthy thread you contributed to on monsterfishkeepers as well. Great information. I am going to look into how my water in Cochrane is treated more closely. I may be switching back to good old sodium thiosulfate. Can you recommend a quality chlorine test kit?

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Exactly what happened in your tank is beyond me, far too many variables involved for anyone to really know when just sitting on the sidelines. I do not know what the exact results are under various conditions, and tanks, when overdosing with Safe - but I have (read) and personally seen massive fish die offs from overdoses of Seachem Prime. I'm guessing that's why they state 'Do Not Overdose!" on the label of Safe. A 1/2 teaspoon of Safe, per 40 or 50 gallons of tap water, was an overdose. There is no arguing that fact. Having said that I have no idea whether that overdose of Safe caused your problem, or not.

Calgary also treats with chlorine, carbon & UV, and nowhere near 4ppm chlorine is coming out of anyones tap, especially at this time of the year. Even during spring run off I doubt that anyone in AB will ever see residual disinfectant levels of 4ppm. For 2012 Calgary has Free Chlorine residual listed as: 0.84-1.42

http://www.calgary.ca/UEP/Water/Pages/Drinking-water/Annual-water-quality-report/Water-Quality-Parameters.aspx

I believe that most pool outlets sell chlorine test kits, but I cant vouch for any one particular brand.

Sorry that I couldn't have been more help.

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