# Water Conditioner



## Slacker414 (Jan 23, 2017)

Hopefully I'm posting this question in the appropriate area. Say I'm doing a partial water change, 5 gallons of a 20 gallon tank. My assumption is that I only use enough conditioner to treat the 5 gallons of new water. It would seem to me if I treated all 20 gallons of water I would be using too much conditioner, especially since I'm doing these partial water changes every couple of days. Am I correct? Thanks!


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

For small water changes I don't think it's necessary to dose the whole tank. Common sense prevails there . But if you were doing a large change, like say 80%, then you might as well dose the whole tank. That's how I look at it. Others believe you should dose the whole tank no matter what - that's what the instructions say to do. It's up to you to decide what to do


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## beaslbob (Oct 17, 2012)

Slacker414 said:


> Hopefully I'm posting this question in the appropriate area. Say I'm doing a partial water change, 5 gallons of a 20 gallon tank. My assumption is that I only use enough conditioner to treat the 5 gallons of new water. It would seem to me if I treated all 20 gallons of water I would be using too much conditioner, especially since I'm doing these partial water changes every couple of days. Am I correct? Thanks!


 that's correct.
FWIW most all de-chlorinators, water conditioners and the like work be reducing chlorine and ammonia. Some reduce chloramine to chlorine and ammonia. 


They use sulfur based compounds that actually are toxic to fish. Plus the resultant "locked up" ammonia still tests as ammonia with most ammonia test kits.


The danger is you treat, still test ammonia, treat again (or a week later) and so on. When all along, that first treatment may have locked up all the ammonia and the subsequent treatments were 1) unnecessary and 2) dangerous. The treatment also locks up oxygen so it is possible with overdosing to suffocate the fish which will display the same exact symptoms as ammonia poising.


Live plants instead work by consuming ammonia directly and CO2 and returning oxygen and fish food. Along with no water changes (or very small weekly ones) the chlorine/chloramine added is easily reduced by the natural action of the tank making chemical additions at least unnecessary (at most harmful).


But that's just my .02


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

Again bob, no one kills their fish with water conditioner and it's just fear mongering to suggest that water conditioner is unsafe to use. Really ridiculous, I'm sorry to say.

The OP says they don't want plants and you try to scare them into following your method??? Shameful.


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## Warhawk (Feb 23, 2014)

Slacker414 said:


> Hopefully I'm posting this question in the appropriate area. Say I'm doing a partial water change, 5 gallons of a 20 gallon tank. My assumption is that I only use enough conditioner to treat the 5 gallons of new water. It would seem to me if I treated all 20 gallons of water I would be using too much conditioner, especially since I'm doing these partial water changes every couple of days. Am I correct? Thanks!



You are right only add enough conditioner to treat the new water going into the tank. I will normally do a little extra so in the 20g tank you change 5g I would treat for 6-8 gallons that way you know its good. 

But like Jay said if you do small changes you don't need to treat, I have done 20% changes and not had any issues but I normally treat to be safe.


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## Warhawk (Feb 23, 2014)

As for what Bob is talking about if you use "Prime" or other conditioners it will "lock" the ammonia so it is safe for the fish but will show on a test kit. Doesn't matter keep doing water changes and the cycle will happen and when ammonia is 0, nitrites 0, and nitrate 10+ you have cycle pretty easy.


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## beaslbob (Oct 17, 2012)

jaysee said:


> Again bob, no one kills their fish with water conditioner and it's just fear mongering to suggest that water conditioner is unsafe to use. Really ridiculous, I'm sorry to say.
> 
> The OP says they don't want plants and you try to scare them into following your method??? Shameful.


 
I disagree and hope all posters here have awesome aquariums with healthy fish.


An example of my concerns were discussed in this old thread http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/...n/effect-prime-oxygen-levels-aquarium-294058/


Sodium thiosulfate is a very common de chlorinator whose msds' specifically state a danger to fish when released in the environment.


By contrast, using live plants not only avoids all those dangers but actually makes the tank healthier for fish.


my .02


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

Bob lets be honest, you don't care about what anyone actually wants to do - all you are here to do is push your very specific method of keeping fish. Anyone can simply look at all your posts and see that that's the case. Doesn't matter what the topic is, doesn't matter what the OP says - you're here for only one reason. To promote the beaslbob method. You don't care what falsehoods you spread in order to accomplish that goal, as is evidenced by quoting the MSDS. Utterly ridiculous and shameful.


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## Warhawk (Feb 23, 2014)

Bob I try not to get into debates but I think you are over stating the risk. We all want to keep healthy fish and just like anything else in the world if you use the product correctly it will be perfectly safe. But if you don't it can be harmful. 

Having tanks that are very heavily planted can cause issues also like plants pulling O2 out of the water at night meaning less for the fish. And yes that will take a huge amount of plants and lots of fish but just saying it can happen. There is not perfect way to keep fish in small glass boxes we can't make it like it is in the wild so we do the best we can.


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## beaslbob (Oct 17, 2012)

Warhawk said:


> Bob I try not to get into debates but I think you are over stating the risk. We all want to keep healthy fish and just like anything else in the world if you use the product correctly it will be perfectly safe. But if you don't it can be harmful.
> 
> Having tanks that are very heavily planted can cause issues also like plants pulling O2 out of the water at night meaning less for the fish. And yes that will take a huge amount of plants and lots of fish but just saying it can happen. There is not perfect way to keep fish in small glass boxes we can't make it like it is in the wild so we do the best we can.


 
Agree 100%. 


FWIW IME although plants do respire lights off, decreasing oxygen and increasing co2, the tank becomes a net producer of oxygen and consumer of co2 each 24 hour period. And based upon pH measurements in my non circulated tanks the co2 at night is much lower and oxygen much higher than tanks with no plant life and with circulation.


still just my .02


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## Slacker414 (Jan 23, 2017)

Warhawk said:


> You are right only add enough conditioner to treat the new water going into the tank. I will normally do a little extra so in the 20g tank you change 5g I would treat for 6-8 gallons that way you know its good.
> 
> But like Jay said if you do small changes you don't need to treat, I have done 20% changes and not had any issues but I normally treat to be safe.





Warhawk said:


> As for what Bob is talking about if you use "Prime" or other conditioners it will "lock" the ammonia so it is safe for the fish but will show on a test kit. Doesn't matter keep doing water changes and the cycle will happen and when ammonia is 0, nitrites 0, and nitrate 10+ you have cycle pretty easy.


Ok, thanks. Didn't know that Prime locks the ammonia and that the ammonia would still show on a test. How long is it locked up for? I don't want to be testing for it if it's not giving me a true measurement.


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

24 hours.

Too, something to keep in mind is that prime is safe to dose up to 5 times the recommended dosage.....just to give you an idea about what is and isn't safe.


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## Slacker414 (Jan 23, 2017)

Awesome, thanks a lot


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

beaslbob said:


> Sodium thiosulfate is a very common de chlorinator whose msds' specifically state a danger to fish when released in the environment.
> 
> 
> By contrast, using live plants not only avoids all those dangers but actually makes the tank healthier for fish.
> ...




Bob I checked the MSDS sheets










Says it's toxic to mosquito fish at 24,000 mg/l. Doesn't say anything about being a danger to fish when released into the environment.


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## beaslbob (Oct 17, 2012)

Slacker414 said:


> Ok, thanks. Didn't know that Prime locks the ammonia and that the ammonia would still show on a test. How long is it locked up for? I don't want to be testing for it if it's not giving me a true measurement.


 
One way of avoiding this is to measure the free ammonia using the seachem multitest kit (or the seachem ammonia dot)


see: Seachem - MultiTest: Ammonia




from that page said:


> This kit is based on the same gas exchange technology that is used in the Ammonia Alert® and thus is the only kit on the market that can read levels of free ammonia while using ammonia removal products such as Prime®, Safe™, AmGuard™ and any similar competing products. The other kits (salicylate or Nessler based) determine the total ammonia by raising the pH of the test solution to 12 or greater. At this high pH all ammonia removal products will breakdown and rerelease the ammonia, thus giving you a false ammonia reading.


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

The seachem ammonia alert "dot" is a much more sensitive test than a standard test. The scale of the reading the test gives is extremely narrow, ranging from 0.02 to 0.5 ppm if I recall correctly. This may possibly be helpful in a cycled tank, but it's not suited for a cycling tank with its much higher concentrations of ammonia, and it doesn't address nitrite..... so it's usefulness is quite limited. Best to stick to a standard test kit.


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## beaslbob (Oct 17, 2012)

jaysee said:


> Bob I checked the MSDS sheets
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 Other than don't pour it down the drain. LOL


not surprising the Prime manufacturer doesn't have the effects on aquatic life available. Yet it does state one fish. Other msds's state mortality to those fish.


my .02


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

The first one is for sodium thiosulfate.

Second is prime.

You're not supposed to pour vegetable oil or bacon grease down the drain either. It doesn't say why not to pour it down the drain, so I guess that means you can claim it means whatever you want....

But "don't pour down the drain" is a FAR CRY from your claim of "specifically state a danger to fish when released in the environment"

Doesn't seem very specific at all Bob.


Here's another one for sodium thiosulfate


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## beaslbob (Oct 17, 2012)

I'm glad your msds points out the 'high concentrations will contribute to elevated chemical oxygen demand in aquatic environments.' so it does lock up oxygen.


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## Roxane1232 (Mar 8, 2017)

I got some jungle conditioner with Aloe when I purchased my aquaqrium should I consider using Prime instead I looked at Petsmart and it was not that expensive.


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

Prime is just the most economical if I'm not mistaken, and arguably the best product on the market for the job. Use up what you have since you bought it Roxanne, but maybe look to make a switch next time.




beaslbob said:


> I'm glad your msds points out the 'high concentrations will contribute to elevated chemical oxygen demand in aquatic environments.' so it does lock up oxygen.




It's not MY msds.... 

That it uses oxygen was never in dispute.....What constitutes "high" is what IS in dispute. 2 of the msds I posted actually attribute a value to that, so what say you about them? Or do you prefer to hide behind conjecture?


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## Warhawk (Feb 23, 2014)

Roxane1232 said:


> I got some jungle conditioner with Aloe when I purchased my aquaqrium should I consider using Prime instead I looked at Petsmart and it was not that expensive.



I have used other conditioners over the years, some times they come with new tanks and some times people give them to me but Prime is the most economical. If you read the bottle it tells you a cap full with treat X amount of gallons so if you do the math a bottle will treat XXX gallons. Compare that to the others bottle and normally they will treat less than half what Prime will do. I don't remember how much a cap full treats but I think it is 50g. So one bottle will last a long time. 

Prime is made by the company Seachem and they make a lot of nice products. I used Prime for years but I switched to Safe which is the powered concentrate version of Prime, because I have lots of tanks and do lots of water changes. 

It is a great product and great to have on hand always.


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## Stan (Feb 24, 2017)

jaysee said:


> Bob I checked the MSDS sheets
> 
> 
> 
> ...


24000 mg/l = 240000 ppm. 24000 ppm = 2.4%. If my math is correct, that would be 2.4 gallons of treatment in 100 gallons of water. So half a gallon of treatment in a 20 gallon tank would kill that poor mosquito fish. Most people buy an 8 oz or 16 oz bottle, I would think, so that mosquito fish is pretty safe in the average aquarium, even if my math is off. It might be in trouble in a really small tank, though.

Back to the matter at hand, it never occurred to me that the treatment was for the complete tank volume. I always assumed treatment is for new water only. It looks like it wouldn't hurt either way except under rare circumstances. Since I'm a cheapo, I treat the least amount but I'm not worried about a little more.


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## beaslbob (Oct 17, 2012)

In a balanced system where the existing ammonia and chlorine is already zero, you just add Prime for the new water.


To be safe it is best to treat for the free ammonia as measured by the seachem multitest kit or ammonia dot. Not the ammonia as measured by other test kits like the api ammonia kit.


Or just use plants and just replace water that evaporates.


But that's just me and my .02


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

Bob you make a really good point there - an important distinction. If you are cycling your tank it's really best to dose the entire volume because of the probable higher levels of ammonia/nitrite than with a tank that's already cycled. Unless you are changing all the water in the tank, there is always residual ammonia after a water change in a cycling tank


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## Exodus1500 (Apr 5, 2017)

My method, and what I have found through research has led me to the following:If you are pretreating the water before it goes into the tank, you treat for that amount of water.If you are adding the water to the tank, then treating, you add it for the total volume of the water.I use RO water and add some hot tap water to get it up to temp before I add it to the tank, so I use very little prime.


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## jaysee (Dec 9, 2009)

Out of curiosity, what reason was given for the need to treat the whole tank when adding water to the tank first?


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