Outdoor pond chlorine problems

[Grubhead]

I'm going to assume the fish will be fine then and give it a go. I'll check every now and then (after rain, a hot sunny day, etc.) to see if I can figure out when the chlorine levels are detectable.
 

[Hobbit]

I think the chlorine in my tubs stalled my cycle—when I added fish I had a week or two when the ammonia/nitrite really spiked. But the fish made it through just fine, thankfully! I say go for it. It’s usually what I do, for better or for worse. 😄 

[Grubhead]

It rained last night so I tested the water again. The Aquarium Coop strip shows 1.5ppm. I can't tell for sure, but it looks like the "free chlorine" on the pool testing strip may be showing 1pmm, but it's hard to tell.

Odd...I don't think it is possible for there to be chlorine in rain, and usually rain makes chlorine levels drop in a pool, so I do wonder what is going on.

I have some baby ricefish in there that seem fine. Plants are doing well too.

[Static]

I'm glad I found this thread to prove that I'm not going insane.

I'm also running into this exact situation for my patio ponds that are housed in Home Depot HDX totes.

When I set up the ponds last summer, I noticed that the Aquarium Coop test strips were always showing chlorine levels of 3.0ppm.

I had a couple of Rice fish die but overall they all survived & I shrugged it off to an issue with the test strips.

After the summer, I set up a 25 gallon tank in my house & I've never seen an issue with the test strips & their chlorine readings.

I always use either Seachem Prime or Fritz Complete before adding water into the bucket for filling a tank/pond.             

Which brings me to now where I'm setting up the patio pond again & I'm seeing the test strips reading chlorine levels at 3.0 ppm no matter how much dechlorinator I add.

Another data point to add is that I have a 2nd pond using an Edge Plastics 21 Gallon Big Tub that doesn't have this issue.

This makes me suspect the HDX totes are leaching chlorine into the pond water.

[johnnyxxl]

Home Depot has a pond liner and totes that are plastic that a few people have threads on here if you search stating that they leach chlorine into the water.It is unfortunate that they also claimed the pond liner was safe for fish when it was leaching toxic levels of chlorine 

[Static]

After some more testing, it doesn't look like the HDX totes are leaching chlorine into the pond water.

From what I can tell, using the Aquarium CoOp test strips outside in direct sunlight will give a false positive chlorine reading.

To confirm this, I took a sample of water from the pond & did back to back water tests, 1 outdoors & 1 indoors.

The outdoor test read 3.0ppm chlorine.

The indoor test read 0 ppm chlorine.

Hope this info will help others.