Prime for well water

[ehh]

That picture is of API Stress Coat +. It claims to do a lot of things........makes me think "snake oil". If API stress coat+ can do all these additional things then why is Seachem Prime so much more popular by hobbyists? Hmm.

i think prime is more popular among people like us. people who have a good grasp of keeping fish. but products like stress coat are really popular with people new to the hobby because 1) it's cheaper and 2) they start off with 10 gallons so the concentrate prime isn't really needed. thats why i have a bottle of of it... for my ten gallon. when i worked at the fish store i would sell people stress coat over prime all the time. 5 or 10 gallon tank don't need prime.

 

[RD.]

5 or 10 gallon tank don't need prime.

I couldn't disagree more. What one needs, or doesn't need, is typically based on the disinfectant (and level) being used locally. Size of tank simply requires one to consider cost, and not just effectiveness.

Is sodium thiosulfate effective against chloramine?

Not exactly. Most companies that simply use sodium thiosulfate will generally recommend that consumers use a "double dose" for chloramine, which will generally ensure that the chlorine part of the chlorine/ammonia combo is reduced, but that still leaves free ammonia residual. Someone with an established heavily planted tank doing a 30% water change may not have any issues, someone with fish only and performing very large water changes could be causing stress, and some long term damage from ammonia toxicity. Especially if one considers that both chlorine & chloramine levels can vary greatly across the US and elsewhere in the world. From less than 1 ppm, to 4+ ppm.

This is why it is so important to know exactly what ones local water conditions are, and not just count on a generalized recommended dose found on a label.
Seachem just recently dumbed down their recommended dosage rates on their labels, which IMO was a huge mistake. The reasoning behind it was a bit shocking to say the least. The short version was, the average consumer can't add 1+1 and divide by 2.

 

[duanes]

I'm curious about the term "well", do you mean your own private well, or a municipal well.
If its private, the only time you would need to add a dechlorinator (conditioner) is if you were to shock it, to disinfect for maintenance, or in case of surface incursion.
If you are on a "municipal well", you would need to contact the provider to find out if it is adding chlorine/chloramine, and if so how much. Some community well providers do add chlorine, some don't.
And as far as minerals, metals, etc, it depends on your fish.
Some fish come from highly concentrated mineral waters, some don't. Some benefit from high mineral content, many rift lake and Central American's do, Amazonian fish don't.
When I lived in Milwaukee, my source water came from Lake Michigan, high calcium, high pH etc, great for my Central American cichlids, not so much for breeding something like Uaru fern... or Altum angels
the purifucation plant added <2ppm chloramine, I used a sodium thio mix, and it worked well.
tap water before sodium thio

after sodium thio added

 

[RD.]

Yes, sodium thiosulfate will render chlorine safe for fish, but it does not bind any free ammonia residual. Not an issue for some folks, but for others it will result in an ammonia spike with every water change.

 

[duanes]

I agree with RD,straight sodium thio doesn't remove free ammonia.
If you have a very healthy system with of seeded biomedia that is regularly cleaned so the beneficial bacteria are robust and constantly turned over, the tiny amount of ammonia in chloramine will be eliminated.
If you have a newly cycled system where the population of bacteria is questionable, sodium thio may not be enough. Or if the system has been running months building up layers of biofilm that suffocates beneficial bacteria with mulm, and creates what is affectionately known as old tank syndrome, sodium thio may also not be sufficient.
If you test for ammonia a soon after a water change with chloramine disinfected water, the test should let you know where your system is at.

For the shot above, testing was done using the Ammonia Salicylate method on a digital Photo-spectrometer. The sample on the left is tank water after a water change (0.02 ppm Ammonia), the middle is a 2ppm standard, and left is a DI water blank used to determine sterility of glassware, and reagent life span (0.00 ppm).
Whenever I would test for ammonia, the minimum aliquot sequence would be those 3, but more often than not, grab samples of tank water would be more than one, just to be safe.

 

[ehh]

I guess mine is a municipal well.

 

[RD.]

With all due respect to my seniors, I don't think that it's quite that simplistic, Duane.

I have been recommending bulk sodium thiosulfate for many years, but only to those on chlorine systems, not chloramine. I think that with chloramine there are too many variables that allow for mistakes to happen.

For those that don't understand the basics - when chloramine tap water is treated with products such as Prime, Safe, the chlorine/ammonia bond is broken, resulting in a certain amount of free ammonia (NH3) that needs to be bound or reduced into a safe nontoxic form. The toxicity of free ammonia is highly dependent on both temperature, and pH, so this can vary GREATLY from one hobbyists tank to another.


A good read on the toxicity of ammonia and fish can be found in the following article posted on the krib, and consider that some researchers now feel that some of the EPA values stated in the past may be underrated, or undervalued.


http://www.thekrib.com/Chemistry/ammonia-toxicity.html


Experiments have shown that the lethal concentration of free ammonia for a variety of fish species ranges from 0.2 to 2.0 ppm.

Experiments have shown that exposure to un-ionized ammonia concentrations as low as 0.002 ppm for six weeks causes hyperplasia of gill lining in salmon fingerlings and may lead to bacterial gill disease. At higher levels (>0.1 ppm NH3) even relatively short exposures can lead to skin, eye, and gill damage in some species.


Obviously free ammonia (NH3 ) is toxic to fish. How long that toxin will remain in one’s tank, and how toxic it will be, will be dependent on a number of factors. Temperature of water, pH value of water, planted tank vs non-planted, size of biological filtration, whether the biological filters are well established, or not, size/volume of water change, duration (time) of water change, species of fish, life stage of fish, level of chloramine in system, and last but not least, frequency of exposure. Did I miss any? There are a LOT of variables involved!

Even if one tests after the water change, as Duane described, and comes up with a 0.0 reading, there may still be low levels present during the water change. Some of my refills are over an hour in duration - and I know from experience that there will be free ammonia residual during the refill, unless I use a product such as Prime or Safe. And this is with a massive amount of very active & well established bio media in place. Bio media can only work so fast. I can't even imagine what faces those that have uber high levels of chloramine during certain times of the year, such as heavy rain periods, spring run off, etc.


“A single or simple concentration measurement of ammonia is not sufficient to evaluate and/or regulate ammonia contamination. The influence on the toxicity of ammonia to fish is impacted by both duration and frequency of exposure.”


http://www.nature.org/images/ammonia-literature-review-dec-2010.pdf




With the value of dry powder formulas such as Seachem Safe, and all the various unknowns regarding safe levels in different species of fish, and their age groups, I see no reason why anyone on a chloramine treated system would choose to not use a product that would not only render the chlorine portion of chloramine (chlorine/ammonia) safe, but also render the free ammonia portion to a fish safe form. IMO exposure to low levels of free ammonia from external sources are very much along the same line as second hand smoke, something that my generation ignored for several decades.