Chlorine / Chloramine and Rays

[Just Toby]

Please excuse all of the detail but I want to put you in the picture:

I have a new tank (250gal) coming as a starter until my new rays grow out of it (soon to arrive 1 marble and 1 pearl - both small and young)

• Tank drilled at 50% water height and plumbed to waste
• Fresh water feed with koi pond large carbon filter reputed to remove chlorine.
• Fresh water to sump with ball valve to top up
• Computer timer to do water change via plumbed waste at daily intervals.

I plan to have a digital timer running a peristaltic pump which will feed dechlorinator and chloramine remover at the same time as the water change BUT (here is my question finally) The dechlorinator will slowly feed in at 32ml per minute, will this be sufficient in terms of the water will be feeding in to the sump faster at the pump end and therefore the mix may not be exact at first, will this be a problem?

 

[Just Toby]

My first new thread and I am having to bump it?

 

[CrAzYNeSs]

At 32ml/min how long will it take the peristaltic pump to dechlorinate/dechlorimate the entire amount of water swapped out during the water change? This is also highly dependent on the type of water conditioner you are using.

Seachem Prime is rather concentrated.

Use 1 capful (5 mL) for each 200 L (50 gallons*) of new water. This removes approximately 1 mg/L ammonia, 4 mg/L chloramine, or 5 mg/L chlorine.

In this example, using Prime - if you were to swap out 50% of your tank water ([250/2gal]*5ml/50gal) it would only require 12.5ml. This equates to ([12.5ml*60sec]/32ml) only about 23.4375 seconds of actual pump time to administer and condition the water swapped out.

Water conditioners work surprisingly fast. Since, chloramine and chlorine is not immediately deadly to your fish, there is no need to do a 1:1 mix ratio during water changes. Therefore, I do not foresee a problem. Good luck.

PS - check with your local water district to check on the concentration of chloramine and chlorine in your water supply. The conditioners (ml per liter) may need to be adjusted depending on the figures your local water supply tells you.

 

[Just Toby]

Thanks for the reply.

I have been using a dechlorinator that is specified at 10ml per 10 gallons for use where chloramine present or half that where Chlorine present.

I think I am right in saying that it would not hurt to "overdose" the system to the point that I am dechlorinating the whole tank volume.

I have run the peristaltic pump today and it took an age to empty a drinking glass therefore I think I will look out for a low concentrate dechlorinator where I can pump a bit more in.

I will check out my local water authority.

 

[sam buckle]

Don't trust what they tell you in Guildford about the tapwater
i lived there and worked with fish most of my life. The levels of chlorine etc fluctuate daily also the water authority lied to me about pyretherum being added. Chlorine will be taken out by the carbon as long as the flow is slow enough with regards chloramine I have read somewhere about running a canister containg zeolite after the carbon will remove chloramine. I might be wrong. Chloramine is not added directly on the Uk water supply, they add ammonia after the chlorination process and this combines to form chloramine.
So zeolite might have an ionic affinity chloramine.
With pups like you are getting I would not think 50 percent daily water changes neccesary. Also what ph and more importantly kh( hardness) are the rays in at the moment? As my tapwater in gford was ph 8.5 and rift lake levels of hardness!
And lastly what is the nitrate of your tapwater as when I lived in Guildford it came out the tap between 50 and 90 ppm! The carbon won't remove that.
I'm not being negative just pointing things out so you don't have any pitfalls at a later date. You can pm me if you need any more advice on keeping rays in Guildford water.

 

[Just Toby]

Hi, Thanks for the input.

I am actually near Haslemere in a village called Lindford, I put Guildford as people seem to know this.

My water is high 7's in PH and yes the Chlorine fluctuates a lot. The Nitrate is brilliant in the tap, I check it all the time and it never registers at all on basic kits and on mega accurate ones it is at very low levels below 1-5 ppm. I have not checked hardness in a while as I have always kept african cichlids but I will get a new kit this weekend and test the tap water.

I will not do 50% water changes - the drain is drilled at 50% height to allow this as a maximum or fail safe, the actual set up will be more like 20-30 gallons every other day (automated) along with 25% or more at the weekends to include the gravel clean (much of this will be monitored against nitrate levels to be fair)

2 days ago I got my peristaltic pump which will dose dechlorinator during the water change and at double dose it says that it will remove Chloramine too.

Thanks for the info on zeolite, I will look in to this.

The pups (deposit down) are coming from "'op north" so I will get a set of parameters from the breeder but I will drip them over a long period to ease them in.