Chlorine in tap water

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Charney

Charney

The Fish Doctor
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Nov 15, 2005
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I have been in this hobby a while now and barely ever had the need to dechlorinate my water. I moved about about four months ago. By the time i go to the new house it was 1 am and I couldn't find my stress coat anywhere. I set up the tanks and acclimated the fish. For the next hour I watched a lot of my fish die. It was awful. I am pretty sure it was he chlorine that did them in. Afterwords I was using stress coat for my weakly water changes. After a couple weeks I got brave and decided to see what would happen if I stopped with the stress coat and all was good, until today. I did my normal water change and now I am down several albino tinfoil barbs and an awesome synodontis decorus (honestly one of the nicest clown cats I have seen). The tank's pH has not changed, no ammonia, nitrite, and low nitrate. Does the amount of chlorine / chloramine in the tap fluctuate?
 
been doing it for roughly 20 years without issue until this year. When I used to breed discus, africans, plecos, australian crayfish and various other cichlids I did it without issue. Now obviously I am having an issue. Just curious if the amount fluctuates. I rarely loose fish, except for today and four months ago.
 
To answer your question, yes, the chlorine concentration can fluctuate. For instance if there is an excessive amount of runoff into the water supply and they anticipate higher levels of contaminants than usual, they can increase it.
 
The National Cancer Institute estimates cancer risks for people who consume chlorinated water to be 93% higher than for people who do not. That cant be good for our fish.

Thats a gem of a fact I just uncovered.

Chlorine isnt a contaminant, Its a disease preventive additive, because prior to chlorine in water, City water made alot of people sick. NY does have to heavily treat there water.
Anyway, Chlorine in water will stabalize, Water straight out the spicket is not stable and can harm fish. Where the PH or Chlorine is off.
Here in PA, I dont need prime. All you have to do is test the chlorine level and PH and treat accordingly and you should be all good.
 
Chlorine will gas off in a day or so
It is likely that small water changes with chorinated water
would depress the BB colony and stress the fish but not kill either
but moving to a new house and doing a full on chlorine bath is different
Even if the tank was set up a day ahead of the fish it might have been ok
Do not do this
 
Of course an increase of bleach can be a bit harmful to BB.
Primarily chlorine is going to cause breathing issues along with irritation and stress on the fish. Longer exposure is going to cause organ failures, primarily with the kidneys and liver, They will then die of blood poisoning. Chlorine, Ph, Chloramines all effect eachother and its all about finding the right balance.

Most cases chemicals are needed to neutralize chlorines, because us monster fish keepers dont really have hundreds of gallons of evaporated aged water sitting around.
 
Charney;4564272; said:
Does the amount of chlorine / chloramine in the tap fluctuate?
Click to expand...

Yes it can fluctuate drastically depending on your location in the distribution system, if your water provider is feeding just free chlorine and not chloramines, the cl2 level in the water will decrease as your distance from the injection point increases, if you have chloramines the effect is far less noticeable but it still happens.
 
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