How long does it take for dechlor to kill chlorine ?
- Thread starter tcarswell
- Start date
Ok I read into this and did some research and here's a few things I learned. I'll start first with chlorine then chloramine.
Chlorine:
In the US EPA Guidelines require a minimum of at least .2 ppm of chlorine in all drinking water. It can be as high as 1 ppm and in rarer cases higher. (4 ppm is dangerous to humans.
Exposure to .2-.3 ppm chlorine will kill most fish "fairly rapidly"
Long term exposure or greater than 30 minutes of .003 ppm can have negative affects over time
Short term exposure or less than 30 minutes of .05 ppm can affect fertility over time
Chlorine does burn the gills of fish
At the water plant if they were to add 1 ppm of chlorine by the time it reaches your house it could be less then half of that
I also learned that the aerator on your faucet alone is enough to disperse nearly all of the chlorine
The python does the same thing when the water splashes into the tank and actually removes some of the chlorine NOT all of it. They claim you don't need to add more chemicals if you don't want to and even recommend just adding dechlorinator to the stream as you refill the tank if you choose too.
Also aerating water with JUST chlorine will remove all the chlorine in usually under 24 hours. NOTE: This does not take care of any harmful metals in the water that some dechlorinators will remove.
Chloramine
Even though chloramine is much harder to disperse from water than chlorine it's not as good at killing algae and other bacterias.
Usually a water plant that uses chloramine keeps the levels typically around 1 ppm.
Also if they add it at 1 ppm at the plant it's probably at about 1 ppm when it reaches your house.
Chloramine is made by combining chlorine with ammonia. If your water conditioner breaks down chloramine but doesn't neutralize ammonia to give the filters time to break it down to nitrate every water change your basically introducing ammonia to your tank.
Also it works in reverse: If you do a water change and don't add a dechlorinator to your tank and your water contains chlorine it could combine with any ammonia in the tank and create chloramine
Chloramine does not burn the gills of fish but actually passes into their blood stream causing them to be deprived of oxygen. It's almost the same as nitrite poisening.
A fish affected by chloramine poisening will appear sluggish and "breath" heavily
Oddly chloramine hasn't been proven to be deadly and is actually in a study being added to fish hatcheries to controll bacterial gill disease.
I couldn't find anything on the affects of long term exposure of chloramine on fish
My grand conclusion is if your water contains chlorine and you use a python with the addition of a water conditioner your fish should be fine. For example:
If your city water adds .2 ppm chlorine by the time it reaches your house it should be about .1 ppm. If you own a 100 gallon tank and do a 25% water change your tank will have roughly .025 ppm just from being diluted by the water in the tank. The splashing of adding the water from the python will bring this level down significantly and the addition of a dechlorinator would just be over kill. All in all I'd guess your fish would maybe be exposed to an unnoticable change in their environment and any chlorine that made it this far would be dissolved in a fairly quickly amount of time. To be honest this may be considered inhumane by some to take this chance but I've known people who own fish for years using this method and the only thing their fish have ever died from is old age.
My conclusion with chloramine is pretty much the same except from what I've read I don't feel like you have to be as carefull. While chlorine will cause a good amount of damage in a short amount of time the only thing I've read that chloramine can cause is methemoglobinemia. I feel as long as you picked a dechlorinator that neutralizes ammonia it will have little to no affect on the fish.
Either way it seems if you want to be extra extra carefull have pre made water on hand. There's nothing wrong with that. But from what I've read the straight to tank method is what I'm going to stick with for the time being until I see more evidence otherwise that it's worth it to have it pre made. While I will admit that it's probably healthier for your fish to have it pre made I don't see enough of a benefit to consider it worth it at this time. I will admit I am looking into this issue more I only posted what I've learned so far.
Chlorine:
In the US EPA Guidelines require a minimum of at least .2 ppm of chlorine in all drinking water. It can be as high as 1 ppm and in rarer cases higher. (4 ppm is dangerous to humans.
Exposure to .2-.3 ppm chlorine will kill most fish "fairly rapidly"
Long term exposure or greater than 30 minutes of .003 ppm can have negative affects over time
Short term exposure or less than 30 minutes of .05 ppm can affect fertility over time
Chlorine does burn the gills of fish
At the water plant if they were to add 1 ppm of chlorine by the time it reaches your house it could be less then half of that
I also learned that the aerator on your faucet alone is enough to disperse nearly all of the chlorine
The python does the same thing when the water splashes into the tank and actually removes some of the chlorine NOT all of it. They claim you don't need to add more chemicals if you don't want to and even recommend just adding dechlorinator to the stream as you refill the tank if you choose too.
Also aerating water with JUST chlorine will remove all the chlorine in usually under 24 hours. NOTE: This does not take care of any harmful metals in the water that some dechlorinators will remove.
Chloramine
Even though chloramine is much harder to disperse from water than chlorine it's not as good at killing algae and other bacterias.
Usually a water plant that uses chloramine keeps the levels typically around 1 ppm.
Also if they add it at 1 ppm at the plant it's probably at about 1 ppm when it reaches your house.
Chloramine is made by combining chlorine with ammonia. If your water conditioner breaks down chloramine but doesn't neutralize ammonia to give the filters time to break it down to nitrate every water change your basically introducing ammonia to your tank.
Also it works in reverse: If you do a water change and don't add a dechlorinator to your tank and your water contains chlorine it could combine with any ammonia in the tank and create chloramine
Chloramine does not burn the gills of fish but actually passes into their blood stream causing them to be deprived of oxygen. It's almost the same as nitrite poisening.
A fish affected by chloramine poisening will appear sluggish and "breath" heavily
Oddly chloramine hasn't been proven to be deadly and is actually in a study being added to fish hatcheries to controll bacterial gill disease.
I couldn't find anything on the affects of long term exposure of chloramine on fish
My grand conclusion is if your water contains chlorine and you use a python with the addition of a water conditioner your fish should be fine. For example:
If your city water adds .2 ppm chlorine by the time it reaches your house it should be about .1 ppm. If you own a 100 gallon tank and do a 25% water change your tank will have roughly .025 ppm just from being diluted by the water in the tank. The splashing of adding the water from the python will bring this level down significantly and the addition of a dechlorinator would just be over kill. All in all I'd guess your fish would maybe be exposed to an unnoticable change in their environment and any chlorine that made it this far would be dissolved in a fairly quickly amount of time. To be honest this may be considered inhumane by some to take this chance but I've known people who own fish for years using this method and the only thing their fish have ever died from is old age.
My conclusion with chloramine is pretty much the same except from what I've read I don't feel like you have to be as carefull. While chlorine will cause a good amount of damage in a short amount of time the only thing I've read that chloramine can cause is methemoglobinemia. I feel as long as you picked a dechlorinator that neutralizes ammonia it will have little to no affect on the fish.
Either way it seems if you want to be extra extra carefull have pre made water on hand. There's nothing wrong with that. But from what I've read the straight to tank method is what I'm going to stick with for the time being until I see more evidence otherwise that it's worth it to have it pre made. While I will admit that it's probably healthier for your fish to have it pre made I don't see enough of a benefit to consider it worth it at this time. I will admit I am looking into this issue more I only posted what I've learned so far.
Dr Joe;2763940; said:
Thank you for taking the time to write that. I don't have the energy to fight the battle anymore. It seems like a losing battle too.
