red-tail is levitating

[-DC-]

thebiggerthebetter,

Good Google searching, Although using a site that sells pond treatment products as a reference point for the harm of chlorine might not be the best choice.

Your on the right track though if you honestly are looking to learn more about it, you'll have to go more in depth into the chemistry, and how the various the water parameters in the tank and in the tap effect the chlorine, as well as the effects of aeration , dissipation rates etc. When your done with that reading, start googling into fish biology exactly what the chlorine does to a fish and how long it takes/what the fish's natural defenses are against it etc.

I hope you dont take that as a sarcastic reply. I'm all for pointing people in the right direction & helping on the forums when I feel I can but I learned a long time ago not to get tied up in these sort of "educational debates". I'm done with the day's of beating my head off the keyboard debating against someone who's just googling a counter argument.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Thanks again, Devon. I do not take it as sarcastic but I think I'd take it as not following the Occam's wisdom. To me it is pretty simple because we/I are at the first iteration. To answer the original question, all we need to know is

(1) what chlorine concentration harms fish and how fast and severe (surely varies for fishes, temps, pHs, etc., so approx./range is fine) and
(2) what the chlorine concentration is in the incoming tap water (surely will vary depending on location, so again, approx./range is fine).

Surely this is knowable and I was hoping you'd know that. I utterly do not expect you to conduct research to answer my question just because I did an hour of research to ask a half-educated question. That'd be silly.

Seems like what you do know is your experience that tells you that chlorine kills off BBs long before it affects your fish. And that's a valuable datum... to me anyway.

Like you said, chloramine may be quite different.

I never use non-conditioned water for my WCs, so I'd not know. The only relevant datum I have is that a long time ago when I was young and stupid(er) I used to bring lots of various freshly-caught, live fw fish home and put them in my bath tub, they'd be dead in minutes to tens or minutes. But that water reeked of chlorine...

 

[-DC-]

Oh, I see what you were looking for ,

Unfortunately no off the top of my head i couldn't give a simple chart so to speak of what concentrations are harmful over a given period of time/ what time frame it would take for given level to be harmful.

Years back i was in your shoes and another knowledgeable fish keeper left me with the same questions after i read him stating the same thing, i researched it back then and came too the conclusion he was right lol. That was long ago though. i just recall that when all is said and done the concentrations introduced from your tap water are typically not high enough &/or dissipates too quickly for the exposure too do harm to the fish. But i honestly couldn't tell you off the top of my head exactly what concentration of chlorine is harmful over a given period of time, I'd have to dig and read again to figure it all out, which i may do now when i have time in case someone questions it again.

Think of it like people and the sun, sit in the sun long enough it'll burn you but get out of the sun before that happens and your fine. The intensity of the UV will determine how long the sun will take to burn. Think of chlorine exposure the same way, and remember it's unstable and dissipates from the water fairly quickly.

Chloramine is actually designed NOT to dissipate from the water, and is used in different concentrations so it's a whole different story.

It is a fairly mute point though because either way the use of a de-chlorinator is needed .

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Right. Thanks, again. I do understand chemistry and physics a little bit, having a doctorate in physical organic chemistry. So, qualitatively, it is all clear. The quantitative picture is unclear but that, as you said, requires a lot more effort and time to hammer out.

... It is a fairly mute point though because either way the use of a de-chlorinator is needed .

Right again, that is until someone like Amopower comes along with his/her story and gets us thinking and scurrying around in the virtual space