Jump to content
Watch our video on the rules of this forum.

Coronal Mass Ejection Carl

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    136

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Feedback

    0%

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Coronal Mass Ejection Carl

  1. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Vortex Mixer WWW.HEATHROWSCIENTIFIC.COM Mini Vortex Mixer The Mini Vortexer by Heathrow Scientific offers immediate vortex shaking for a variety of tube sizes. A simple, touch start operation enables exceptional mixing performance using one hand.
  2. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Make sure you don't get any of the fancy "splash less" bleach.
  3. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    A lot of people complain of off-the-charts ammonia readings after using Ammo Lock. Yet they also say their fish are doing just fine. The salicylate ammonia test is prone to false positives from amino acids and Ammo Lock is an amine according to its SDS so that's my best guess as to why this happens. So while you can no longer get meaningful ammonia test results there's a reasonable chance the ammonia is no longer toxic (API does provide evidence of Ammo Lock's efficacy and is the only manufacturer to do so that I know of).
  4. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    The problem with Safe is actually under-dosing not overdosing. The recommended dose seems small because...it is. The recommended dose of 1 mg per L only removes 0.52 mg/L chloramine (my tap water has chloramine). Typical tap water chloramine levels are 1-2.5 mg/L. I've measured as much as 1.5 mg/L in mine. Now you can see why a few people have had fish deaths after water changes when using Safe. The recommended dose of Prime (1 mL / 10 gal) will neutralize 3.22 mg/L chloramine or 6.2X more than the recommended dose of Safe. Safe's cost advantage over Prime is 18X but once you correct for dosage it's only 3X cheaper.
  5. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    One person in my local club manages a zebrafish lab and I just remembered that she once said our tap water's total gas pressure was in the danger zone. Another person manages one town's drinking water supply and he recommended aging water to deal with our high pH and ammonia (we have chloramine). I'm the one who discovered it when testing dechlorinators so there really isn't any information out there other than what I've put out. One clue is the amount of Prime and Safe Seachem recommends to neutralize bleach after regenerating Purigen it comes out very close. Purigen and Safe - Seachem Support Forums FORUM.SEACHEM.COM Hi Can you use Safe to recharge Purigen? Thanks Mark One person keeps complaining about how the doses of Prime and Safe aren't equivalent. What he doesn't realize is that the recommended doses of Safe and Prime aren't equivalent. If you make a 6.2X adjustment then the numbers make sense. Another clue is that the old dosage was 4X higher with no change in formulation. Then there are the reports I read every few weeks of someone doing a water change and fish dying when using Safe. I'll make a video one of these days.
  6. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Dosing Safe 6.2 times more than recommended will match Prime's recommended dose. Seachem would like you to think that Safe is a lot more "concentrated" than Prime but it isn't. You can dissolve a lot of dry dechlorinator in water. 1 mL of Prime is equivalent to 237 mg of Safe. That sounds like a lot but you can dissolve 700 mg of sodium thiosulfate in 1 mL of water.
  7. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    It's not just oxygen supersaturation but total gas pressure that's the concern. Most of it is probably nitrogen. When gases are supersaturated they will come out of solution. This is why you see bubbles everywhere when you put cold water in a tank and it's warmed up. It's also happening inside the bloodstream of the fish and can cause gas emboli. When I was new to the hobby I would refill directly from my RO filter. I noticed the bubbles but didn't think they were harmful. A few months later the water was colder and/or I did a larger water change and fish died. I've only lost a handful of fish to disease over the years. The vast majority were killed by water changes in the early years. Stricter water change procedures put an end to that.
  8. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    I'm pretty sure tap water is supersaturated with gases as I've measured oxygen at 120%. People with wells may have the opposite problem. Heating cold water in the tank can result in gas bubble trauma. Using hot water from the constantly corroding water heater can put iron, zinc, aluminum, etc., in the water. So I prefer to heat cold tap water in a barrel while mixing it. It does take about 24 hours for oxygen levels to decline to 100%. I add dechlorinator right away and then either let the water sit until the ammonia is eaten by nitrifying bacteria (which can take awhile) or use clinoptilolite to adsorb it. I have a pump on a timer refill the tank in stages so I don't have to worry about matching parameters. A lot of people just mix hot and cold water and throw some dechlorinator into the tank. They also occasionally have fish die. I used to lose fish during/shortly after water changes. Not anymore. This takes more time but isn't really more work. I live here so I don't see what the hurry is.
  9. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    I think it's because they have to measure some parameters quite frequently: Freshwater tanks don't need to be tested this frequently so the demand isn't there.
  10. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    I deliberately avoid using hot water. Most water heaters are corroding away. I fill a barrel with cold tap water where it's dechlorinated and heated with aquarium heaters.
  11. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    I've had bristlenoses and acrylic aquariums for 15+ years and have never noticed any damage.
  12. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    I'm working up to it. Waited for a warm day since I currently get water from the outside garden faucet. Filled my water barrel on Wednesday, added dechlorinator, turned on the heaters and pump. 0.32 mg/L ammonia in there Thursday. Down to 0.20 mg/L ammonia Saturday. I threw some clinoptilolite in to see if it'll help. First time I've tried it for this purpose. When ammonia gets to zero it's WC time.
  13. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    How do you do this? I wasn't aware of any commercial lights that do this.
  14. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    46 mg/L of sodium for every 100 mg/L of calcium carbonate. But if you have a water softener you might have fairly hard water which would be way more than 100 mg/L of calcium carbonate. Assuming the high sodium isn't a problem that still leaves a large sodium-chloride imbalance as well as producing water deficient in calcium and magnesium.
  15. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Does it use potassium chloride instead?
  16. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Do you have any waste accumulation in your filters or substrate? Are you feeding heavily? Nitrate is basically non-toxic but I would still try to get to the bottom of things. Dissolved organic carbon is much more toxic than nitrate and we don't test for it. Nitrate levels can kind of be used as a proxy for DOC levels as the two are somewhat correlated (unless you change water but don't clean your substrate or filter).
  17. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    I would not get a preset heater. If it's off by even a few degrees and you can't adjust it at all...
  18. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Down the drain.
  19. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Oh yeah, Stability is heterotrophic bacteria which can inhibit the development of true nitrifying bacteria. Regular use of it can actually stall the cycle. Flush it.
  20. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    The bacteria aren't limited by surface area. In fact, it only takes a small amount of surface area to support a large amount of fish. Adding a 2nd filter to your tank may not do anything because the bacteria don't need to grow there especially with no increase in bioload. Your new tank may cycle a little faster though.
  21. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    You can have high pH with low-ish kH if your tap water has sodium hydroxide added to it as an anti-corrosion measure.
  22. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    http://www.history.com//favicon.ico Gas cloud kills Cameroon villagers - HISTORY WWW.HISTORY.COM An eruption of lethal gas from Lake Nyos in Cameroon kills nearly 2,000 people and wipes out four villages on August 21, 1986. Carbon dioxide, though ubiquitous
  23. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    Well water makes me nervous. There are potentially a lot of more toxic things than nitrate in it. Fairly sophisticated testing should be done regularly. That's all taken care of for you with tap water as federal regulations are fairly strict. I wouldn't drink well water or use it for aquariums unless it went through a good, well-maintained RO/DI system first. Even then I have a bit more confidence in tap water. I'm not that confident in ion exchange alone for well water.
  24. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    I probably would have gone for RO. Not necessarily whole house RO though as RO water would be corrosive if your house has metal plumbing and a remineralization stage would be required. Nitrate is only toxic if you ingest it. It doesn't pass through skin or gills so you could get a smaller RO system to produce water for drinking and aquariums only. RO membranes are fairly effective at rejecting nitrate and an RO filter should be much more cost effective than ion exchange resins. The stages of an RO/DI filter work in concert. The coarse sediment filters protect the finer sediment filters which in turn protect the carbon stages from being clogged. The carbon stages remove, among other things, chlorine to protect the RO membrane. With effective prefiltration, RO membranes can reject >95% of dissolved solids without fouling for years. Anything that gets through is picked up by the ion exchange stages. Skipping the RO membrane and relying on ion exchange alone will exhaust the resin much, much faster.
  25. Coronal Mass Ejection Carl
    EXO3 Water Quality Sonde Rental WWW.FONDRIEST.COM Multi-Parameter Water Quality Sonde $250 per day to rent. They don't list the price to buy one but I imagine it's pretty high.
×
×
  • Create New...