Re: [RML] Sydney Water
Gary Lange (gwlange at stlnet.com)
Wed, 2 Sep 1998 23:13:11 -0500
Adrian's right Dr. Howe, The chloramines are hard to break at regular
concentrations of chlorine remover. With just aereation is really is
impossible unless you are willing to wait a month (maybe). We had done some
tests here in St. Louis and it was reactive still at two weeks! It's so much
cheaper to break down and buy a dechlor. But use it at 2-3 times recommended
strength. Now the ammonia part that is supposed to be so toxic once you break
the ammonia bond. Unless your tanks are routinely way above pH 8.0 it's not
going to be a problem. The massive fish kills come from people not adding
enough dechlor to begin with which then kills a bunch of fish which then spikes
the ammonia, which they measure and then shout "ammonia kill". In St. Louis we
have been dealing with chloramines since the early eighties, we have had a ton
of experience (myself and my entire local aquarium club) with it. So much of
what has been written and warned about for chloramines is pure bullsh*t. I
have easily broken the bond using regular sodium thiosulfate, the product in a
great many of the "normal" chlorine removers. A saturated solution 3-4 drops
per gallon does the trick. In 1/2 hour yes you can read a very slight ammonia
level at the very lowest setting (.25 mg/liter in the Tetra test kit). Even
when doing 1/2 water changes if you have any sort of biological filter at all
this amount of ammonia will be undectable in 30 minutes. If you break the
chloramine bond by using enough dechlor then you won't have a problem. If you
don't add enough dechlor then your fish will either be dead shortly or have
half their gills destroyed and slowly die over the next few weeks. If you are
truly concerned a product by Kordon (don't know if it's in Oz) product call
Amquel not only breaks the bond by using their recommended dose but also
neutralizes the ammonia. That is, ammonia levels can't be detected when using
the proper salisalic test kit. If you use a cheapo Nessler test kit don't
bother as this interfers with the test kit and will give extremely high false
readings.
BTW if you see a product that "claims" to break the chloramine bond but smells
like formaldehyde don't use it. One of the american manufactures (I forget
who) was using the formaldehyde to tie up the ammonia or some sort of nonsense.
Not a good thing to have your fish or the fishkeeper exposed to on a regular
basis. Hope they clear out the water problems soon. Officials often really
overreact and put way too much (even 5-10x) more chlorine or chloramines into
the water during a "crisis". Even with adding 3x chlorine remover for
chloramines won't work if they've increased the dose to 5x with chloramines.
The only way to totally be sure is to add your removers and then filter in a
barrel with some quality active charcoal.
Hope this helps,
Gary Lange
gwlange at STLNET.com
Rainbowfish Study Group of North America
http://home.stlnet.com/~gwlange/rainbowfish.index.html
> >harmful to fish. I am one of those people that never uses water agers. I
> >store tap water with an airstone in it for upwards of a week and in that way
> >get rid of free chlorine. I am worried that there could be an excess of
> >chloramines in the water.
>
> My understanding of chloramine is that it is very difficult if not
> impossible to remove just by aeration. (That's one of the reasons they use
> it) However, not all water treatment authorities use chloramine and perhaps
> you should check with Sydney Water to see if they actually use Chloramine. I
> know they do in Brisbane and were the first water authority to do so. When
> they first started using it there was massive fish kills in aquariums that
> only treated their water with chlorine removers. Even one of Aquasonics
> "Chloramine" remover did not remove the chloramine in Brisbane water and
> they (Aquasonics) had to make a higher strength product (Chlormon - it used
> to be called Extra Strength) to treat Brisbane water which works very well
> now. Other manufacturers have followed suit. Having said that I would not be
> surprised what they may be dumping in it now! ( Probably creating disastrous
> results for kidney dialyses patients?)
>
> Adrian.
> ...............................................................
> Adrian R. Tappin
> "Home of the Rainbowfish"
> http://www.ecn.net.au/~atappin/home.htm
> ...............................................................