Need help quick

[troy tucker]

The Bad part about Houston tap water is the chloramine. There was a time you could age water to remove chlorine and chloramine. I my self never used detoxifier, until a few years ago. Chlorine will air out of water in 24 hours but chloramine will not leave the water. A few years a go the water co. changed the chloramine. Befor It would settle to the bottom. Now you have to use detoxifier that works on chloramine or carbon filter.

[black_knight]

I agree aeration is the key. Sometimes if you use a lot of the dechlorinators (sulfaroxide salt based) can decrease O2 and also harm your biofilter when it binds all the ammonia. Aeration can help. I have literally wiped out tanks with overdosing with prime in a low flow tank. If your water is not buffered well, you also may see pH crashes with dechlorinators. I crashed tank after tank before I realized what the problem was. It was summer and local water treatment plants were upping their chlorine dosing. You could smell it in the water after a shower. So I started upping my dechlorinator to 3-4x recommended dosing. Every tank that crash had undetectable chlorine levels, ammonia 0, and had been a well established tank until that point. Water became cloudy and fish were gasping. I saved tanks by upping aeration.

[black_knight]

The Bad part about Houston tap water is the chloramine. There was a time you could age water to remove chlorine and chloramine. I my self never used detoxifier, until a few years ago. Chlorine will air out of water in 24 hours but chloramine will not leave the water. A few years a go the water co. changed the chloramine. Befor It would settle to the bottom. Now you have to use detoxifier that works on chloramine or carbon filter.

Agree with you chlorine is quite easy to remove. Pouring water into a tank form a bucket may gas out the majority of chlorine in water, unfortunately it only takes a small amount to be toxic to aquatic life and certainly biofilters. Chloramine is tricky. It's like gum on the bottom of a shoe.
I made a habit of turning off all my filters for 15-20 min. after adding any new water to my tanks, and just running aeration or a korilla, no more cloudy water after water changes.
Carbon filters are the best. I use to have one, just got to lazy to replace the carbon. Then broke the darn thing, when I accidentally ran over it in my garage.

[morpheus]

i guess i am old school and still do my refill by bucket. there are many chlorine removal products, but i went to the API tap water conditioner..."super strength" for removal of chlorine and heavy metals. very concentrated. its 1mL per 10 gal. i dont measure and just put a small squirt into each 3gal bucket i put into the tank during refill. i have never had any issues so far but have heard of others.

also have an airstone running in every tank. some pumps are dual port