How to do a large water change?

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justarn said:
very enlightening, i withdraw my irresponsible statement and i am now thinking of looking for a treatment thats within my budget... if Seachem Safe is available in the uk i may well invest in some. we have a product called aquasafe that i know off which would be an obscene cost with my relatively small 300g let alone a pond... i would advice adding the de chlorinator gradually as you refill though!

thanks for that aldiaz33
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Glad you didn't take my post as a personal attack and I apologize if I came across as being rude because that wasn't my intention; just trying to share some info that I found interesting and hopefully helpful to others.

I can't for the life of me find the thread (don't remember if it was even on this site), but I remember reading about a guy in Southern California that had all of his stock die off in all of his tanks over the course of a couple weeks. He couldn't figure out what was going on...he was no noobie to the hobby. He finally ended up reaching out to his municipal water supplier and found out that they had changed from using chlorine to chloramine but didn't bother to notify anyone. He never conditioned his water and apparently the chlorine would burn off quickly enough to not kill his fish, but with the change to chloramine it was game over for all his little finned friends.

I was doing a water change a few weeks ago and my tank was almost totally refilled and I hadn't yet added any Safe to treat the water. My loaches were swimming in circles upside as if they were drunk...freaked me out. I added Safe and within just a few seconds they were swimming normally. They were definitely suffering from chloramine poisoning. It was amazing to see, but something I never want to see again, so now I treat the entire tank before I even start up the hose to refill.
 
justarn said:
very enlightening, i withdraw my irresponsible statement and i am now thinking of looking for a treatment thats within my budget... if Seachem Safe is available in the uk i may well invest in some. we have a product called aquasafe that i know off which would be an obscene cost with my relatively small 300g let alone a pond... i would advice adding the de chlorinator gradually as you refill though!

thanks for that aldiaz33
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This guy lives in the UK, a much older place of habitation then Canada or the US, his water may come from an old deep well that has no to very low amounts of chlorine. Of course I would still test this and see if it is or isn't, if it isn't then I would for sure go with the seachem safe!

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Here is the quote I mentioned earlier, IIRC this guy has worked for the council on water treatment plants and has a very good understanding of the chemistry involved with water treatment.

When you add chlorine to water you get hypochlorous acid which reacts with nitrogen compounds like ammonia,urea and the amines (in all proteins) and forms monochloramine. When you add more chlorine you get dichloramine and even more you get trichloramine. All these (and other reactions) form part of the "chlorine demand" in the water. You cannot get free available chlorine until this "chlorine demand" is satisfied. Therefore when the reaction is pushed towards trichloramine there will be virtually no monochloramine present. In some states in the US they treat the water with monochloramine (made by reacting chlorine with ammonia) because chlorine will react with other impurities in the water and form some compounds that are not so nice (such as acetone) where as monochloramine will not. Monochloramine is not as effective in treating water as chlorine which is used in NZ but is still a strong oxidising agent.
When people complain that the chlorine in a swimming pool is too strong and it is burning their eyes the problem usually is that the free available chlorine has been used up by contaminants in the water (such as urea) and this has pushed the chloramines back towards the monochloramine and this is what is burning their eyes. The problem is fixed by adding more chlorine.
When you allow water to stand or aerate it to get rid of the chlorine the chloramines all move back to monochloramine and this will react with your fish the same as an under chlorinated swimming pool will with your eyes.
Chlorine and all chloramines can be converted to more harmless chemicals with the addition of sodium thiosulphate which is the active ingredient you are buying from the petshop with dechlorinating products.
Drinking water will contain various impurites that add to the chlorine demand and will form chloramines and other compounds. Ammonia is a bi product of the reaction when adding thiosulphate to chlorinated water. Chlorine only is used to sanitize water supplies in NZ and when you add chlorine you will always get chloramines unless you use distilled water.
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So you will always get some chloramines when chlorine is added to the water, though how much and how harmful it could be I'm not sure. If you can find a source of bulk sodium thiosulphate it will most likely be even cheaper than Seachem Safe for treating chlorinated water.
 
So in short as in my previous post chloramine is chlorine bonded with ammonia.

Which if you use activated carbon like in one of the filter packages available from a company like the filter guys or spectrapure should be able to break it down leaving ammonia. Which if your tanks filtration is up to par should be able to handle the small amount of ammonia left behind.

That is if the OP was to go that route versus the manual water change.

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Well, I will have to look into a drip system because the large water changes are indeed a huge pain the butt. ROFL

It takes minutes to drain the pond but it takes hours to fill it back up.
 
There are 2 main reasons for a water provider to use chloramine.
It remains in the distribution system, longer than chlorine, thus providing disinfection to far reaches of the system.
It does not have disinfection byproducts that are carcinogenic.
Free chlorine in combination with organic compounds produce trihalomethanes which are carcinogens, this is why most water providers are switching to, or have switched to chloramine.
Chloramine is not quite as strong, but lasts longer, and most pathogens targeted by water companies are vulnerable to the oxidizing effects of low dose chloramine.
Chloramine is also effective at killing Legionella bacteria in systems that use water for cooling in their air conditioning system. Free chlorines short half life is lacking in this regard.
 
To be honest, I'm not even sure there is chlorine/chloramine in the water. I live in a rural area (small 7000 people town). The water is provided by the town but I think it comes from underground sources.

Any way to easily find out?
 
Maxime said:
To be honest, I'm not even sure there is chlorine/chloramine in the water. I live in a rural area (small 7000 people town). The water is provided by the town but I think it comes from underground sources.

Any way to easily find out?
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I would look for "contact information" on your latest water bill and give them a call. They should be able tor provide you with a water quality report.
 
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