How long does it take for dechlor to kill chlorine ?

[MeAko]

Okay, here's the deal:
I have 4 50G blue drums and one big pond (as seen in my avatar, link to the build-thread below):

Here were my two water change plans:

Plan A> Remove 100-200G from the pond, this is simple enough, I just turn off the pump, move the hose out from my DIY cabinet filter and point it to my drums, takes about 2 mins or so to fill up a 50G drum. Wheel the drums out to the garden for the household help to use to water the plants.


Bring in the garden hose and let it drip in the replacement water. I had to leave the hose on there for around 8-10 hours. My thinking was that the drip would be dissipating a whole lot of the chlorine. Is this thinking flawed? I did this last week.


Plan B> After reading through this thread, I guess my Plan A is not so ideal, here's my alternative plan. Remove the water the same way. Bring in the hose, put a small bucket and let it sit atop a plastic chair IN the pond. Let the water flow through the hose and as it is filling up and overflowing, I will drip in/pour out prime into the bucket from time to time. But with this plan, the water coming out from the hose would be about full pressure/volume becuase I wouldn't want to be standing in front of my pond for hours bored out of my mind...hehe

If you were forced to choose between Plan A or B, which one would you rather go with?

 

[tcarswell]

Id go with plan B

Personally however.... (If you care to read JMO)

Id say buy a pump and pump the water back in from a drum and give the water 10-15 minutes for the prime to do its work pretty simple equation too one capful of prime per drum obviously. and just fill the drums give it a minute and turn on the pump.
Thats what id do.

 

[MeAko]

Id go with plan B

Personally however.... (If you care to read JMO)

Id say buy a pump and pump the water back in from a drum and give the water 10-15 minutes for the prime to do its work pretty simple equation too one capful of prime per drum obviously. and just fill the drums give it a minute and turn on the pump.
Thats what id do.

Thanks for the input, I think that's something that I would consider doing in the future. As of the moment, I bought used drums and although the seller said it contained sucrose, will just use it for the water change output for the next few months before I consider using them for storage.

 

[tcarswell]

sucrose should not be a big deal I understand the worry though. Just keep them from drying up and ants getting to them right

 

[mfgl]

Im of the impression that if it werent nearly instant there would be instructions on the back of the bottle telling you to wait. I use a bucket. I pour in the dechlor first, fill up the bucket. It rarely sits for more then a minute. Usually I just carry it over and pour it in. Just for my 55 I take out 4 buckets....If I had to wait 15 minutes for each bucket it would take me over an hour to do a water change on this little tank. Ive never had a problem.

 

[12 Volt Man]

from what I understand, yes the reaction is virtually instant, provided there is proper mixing to ensure exposure of the active ingredient (usually sodium thiosulphate) and the free chlorine residual.

which in most applications is a non issue. if it wasn't everyone would be having issues. but we don't.

 

[Geoey]

I use prime and another product called aqua+plus by nutrafin i noticed if i added water straight to the tank bubbles would form after about 5 minutes on all of the glass surface and ornaments (i assume this is the chlorine turning back into gas as the chemical reaction occurs) without a doubt some of the chlorine has already upset the bb in the tank? I have a sa cichlid tank, most of the fish are hardy Os GTs ect so i have not had losses doing it this way but i would highly recomend mixing dechlorinators in with the new water before adding it to your tank.

 

[12 Volt Man]

without a doubt some of the chlorine has already upset the bb in the tank?

no.

one thing to remember that is worth posting in this thread is that chlorine does not kill bacteria on contact. it takes time to work, as in minutes to work.

which is lots of time for your dechlor to mix with the new water before any harm is done. now, this does depend on its concentration of course. but the levels found in normal tapwater will not kill your nitrifying bacteria instantly.

In my line of work, I have had to take courses in chlorine disinfection (I am a wastewate treatment plant operator). we don't use chlorine to disinfect wastewater anymore (we use UV light) but I still took training courses because we are responsible for knowing about it for our certification exams.

okay, some info that might be useful for this thread: (this is all from my head, so bare with me lol)

chlorine is a surface disinfectant. it only works when the products of chlorine and water (hydrochloric acid (HCL) and hypochlorous acid (HOCL) come into direct contact with the surface of a bacterium.

the HCL is higly reactive and does not last long as it quickly reacts with other organics in the water, so the main disinfectant in tap water is the hypochlorous acid.

now, we hear a lot of talk about chloramines (formed from the reaction of ammonia and chlorine when ammonia is added at the water plant).

this is actually not a very good disinfectant compared to the hypochlorous.

but here is why it is important: it doesn't break down easily so it remains available to disinfect as the water from the treatment plant flows through the distribution system of pipes to get to the end of your tap.

what this means is that any biofilms present in the piping will not be able to contaminate your water and make you sick.

I have too have been using AquaPlus from nutrafin for almost 20 years. I always add it to the tank prior to the addition of the new water.

so, you have:

old water (with no chlorine) + dechlor

add tap water

as it is added it reacts with the dechlor and is made safe before any harm is done to your fish or bacteria..

 

[tcarswell]

no.

one thing to remember that is worth posting in this thread is that chlorine does not kill bacteria on contact. it takes time to work, as in minutes to work.

which is lots of time for your dechlor to mix with the new water before any harm is done. now, this does depend on its concentration of course. but the levels found in normal tapwater will not kill your nitrifying bacteria instantly.

In my line of work, I have had to take courses in chlorine disinfection (I am a wastewate treatment plant operator). we don't use chlorine to disinfect wastewater anymore (we use UV light) but I still took training courses because we are responsible for knowing about it for our certification exams.

okay, some info that might be useful for this thread: (this is all from my head, so bare with me lol)

chlorine is a surface disinfectant. it only works when the products of chlorine and water (hydrochloric acid (HCL) and hypochlorous acid (HOCL) come into direct contact with the surface of a bacterium.

the HCL is higly reactive and does not last long as it quickly reacts with other organics in the water, so the main disinfectant in tap water is the hypochlorous acid.

now, we hear a lot of talk about chloramines (formed from the reaction of ammonia and chlorine when ammonia is added at the water plant).

this is actually not a very good disinfectant compared to the hypochlorous.

but here is why it is important: it doesn't break down easily so it remains available to disinfect as the water from the treatment plant flows through the distribution system of pipes to get to the end of your tap.

what this means is that any biofilms present in the piping will not be able to contaminate your water and make you sick.

I have too have been using AquaPlus from nutrafin for almost 20 years. I always add it to the tank prior to the addition of the new water.

so, you have:

old water (with no chlorine) + dechlor

add tap water

as it is added it reacts with the dechlor and is made safe before any harm is done to your fish or bacteria..

Thanks for breaking that down for us.

 

[phillydog1958]

I use the python and put Prime in before I refill. That's it. Nothing has ever happened. I think everyone here(who uses pythons at least) dose the tank then refill. SO letting it sit for 15 minutes is fine. I would think that it changes it or whatever it does to the chlorine instantly. If not us python users would be screwed and have to fill buckets up over and over and over for the larger tanks.

i just dump my chlorine drugs in and start my python up. i have never had any trouble with fish responding negatively. i think it's works "instantly."