Does anyone use refrigerator water in their tanks?

[CT_]

My fridge has a cartridge filter that filters chlorine (we don't have chloramine in our city water either) and other things like heavy metals.

I'm wondering if I could use that instead of adding drops to my water change water.  I presume it would also soften my water but tap water here is really soft and i add salts anyway. 

Does anyone already use 'fridge water in their tank?

 

 

[AdamTill]

Can you? Yes.

Would I trust those little filters with the lives of my aquatic animals? No.

People do rig carbon block etc filters inline with the supply water to pull out chlorine and avoid needing dechlor, but they tend to be much bigger and more robust than the little fridge filters.

You could always get a low range chlorine test kit to check

[Kirsten]

Yeah I agree that I wouldn't trust a fridge filter to get good levels all the time. Plus the water dispensers fridges that I've used have all been super small, great for filling a glass without spilling, but would take forever to fill a 2 gallon bucket. Plus the water is usually pretty cold.

I'd stick to filling up buckets in the bathtub and using a squirt of dechlorinator.

[CT_]

I'm trying to cycle my tank and having "trouble" (read: impatient) so I wanted to prevent binding up my ammonia with the drops.  I'm also using tetra safestart plus with no results (0 nitrate 0 nitrite 1.0 ammonia, 3 guppies in 5g after 5 days).  I went ahead and used the drops (seachem prime) today with a 50% water change.  Added some TSS from a new bottle from a different store chain in case my first bottle came from a bad lot or shipping conditions.  Of course right after, I found an authoritative answer from Tetra saying to wait at least 24 hours after using a dechlorinator/ammonia binder otherwise the TSS dies.  I guess I'll dose some more tomorrow and see how it goes and use boiled fridge water with no drops for the next two weeks (tetra says no water changes but I'm too afraid to go that far unless my ammonia stays under 1.0)

[Brandy]

7 minutes ago, CT_ said:

I'm trying to cycle my tank and having "trouble" (read: impatient) so I wanted to prevent binding up my ammonia with the drops.  I'm also using tetra safestart plus with no results (0 nitrate 0 nitrite 1.0 ammonia, 3 guppies in 5g after 5 days).  I went ahead and used the drops (seachem prime) today with a 50% water change.  Added some TSS from a new bottle from a different store chain in case my first bottle came from a bad lot or shipping conditions.  Of course right after, I found an authoritative answer from Tetra saying to wait at least 24 hours after using a dechlorinator/ammonia binder otherwise the TSS dies.  I guess I'll dose some more tomorrow and see how it goes and use boiled fridge water with no drops for the next two weeks (tetra says no water changes but I'm too afraid to go that far unless my ammonia stays under 1.0)

Seachem Prime doesn't make ammonia unavialable to bacteria. If it kills tetra safe start, it likely does it in some other way. Possibly the same chemical mechanisim to bind ammonia does something to the bacteria directly, but it isn't "starving" them. I would just keep dosing with prime, not change water too often, the bacteria will arrive.

[CT_]

 

31 minutes ago, Brandy said:

Seachem Prime doesn't make ammonia unavialable to bacteria.

I'm curious why that is?  I don't know what's in seachem prime so I'm not really sure how it works.

Edit: I see that Seachem's FAQ says this is so.  Not a satisfying answer but I believe them.

31 minutes ago, Brandy said:

If it kills tetra safe start, it likely does it in some other way. Possibly the same chemical mechanisim to bind ammonia does something to the bacteria directly, but it isn't "starving" them. I would just keep dosing with prime, not change water too often, the bacteria will arrive.

Yeah, although it came directly from their support, I share your skepticism.  Bacteria that are starved for a day and then just die would get out competed pretty fast in nature.  Also if it really killed the bacteria through some other mechanism wouldn't those drops kill off a healthy cycled tank?  I'm pretty sure no one would buy Prime if it did that. 😉

Edited January 16, 2021 by CT_

[Brandy]

3 hours ago, CT_ said:

I'm curious why that is?  I don't know what's in seachem prime so I'm not really sure how it works.

Edit: I see that Seachem's FAQ says this is so.  Not a satisfying answer but I believe them.

So, Prime is a chemical catalyst that converts ammonia to ammonium, which is not as toxic to fish, but still perfectly tasty to bacteria. This is an oxygen consuming reaction, so you can potentially cause a low oxygen environment if you stack several chemicals that use the same/similar mechanism (Excel comes to mind, but also occaisionally people will use several water conditoners because they don't realize most are doing the same thing...), or run a lot of CO2 for plants.

[Coronal Mass Ejection Carl]

1 hour ago, Brandy said:

So, Prime is a chemical catalyst that converts ammonia to ammonium, which is not as toxic to fish, but still perfectly tasty to bacteria. This is an oxygen consuming reaction, so you can potentially cause a low oxygen environment if you stack several chemicals that use the same/similar mechanism (Excel comes to mind, but also occaisionally people will use several water conditoners because they don't realize most are doing the same thing...), or run a lot of CO2 for plants.

Can you write out the reaction for me?

[CT_]

1 hour ago, Brandy said:

So, Prime is a chemical catalyst that converts ammonia to ammonium, which is not as toxic to fish, but still perfectly tasty to bacteria. This is an oxygen consuming reaction, so you can potentially cause a low oxygen environment if you stack several chemicals that use the same/similar mechanism (Excel comes to mind, but also occaisionally people will use several water conditoners because they don't realize most are doing the same thing...), or run a lot of CO2 for plants.

In water ammonia exists as both ammonium and ammonia in a ratio that's dependent on pH and temperature.  I don't think there's a way to force it to exist more so as ammonium without changing pH or temp since the difference between the two is just whether or not a proton is hanging on or not.

[Brandy]

Ok, @CT_ and @Coronal Mass Ejection Carl I am a biologist, not a chemist, but I used to be good at organic chemistry, so I will do my best. Please take this with a grain of salt--pun intended. I could be completely wrong. If one of you has an alternate explanation, or someone else can explain this better please go for it.

Seachem's web site mentions a "reduction reaction" and "complexed hydrogen sulfite salts" which I don't have a specific structure for, but I was assuming something like sodium bisulfite. [(Na+)(-HSO3)] (could be slightly different)

First the ionic bond between the  Na+ and -HSO3 the would be dissolved in water, and the sodium would fall off, leaving HSO3-. The hungry sulfur wants to refill its orbital, reduction reactions would split the chlorine atoms apart, bind the chlorine to hydrogens and then the "hungry" sulfur would grab oxygen from a water molecule. In the same way, the hydrogen can be attached to NH3 (ammonia)  to convert it to ammonium, and I am not good enough to draw you a reaction for all this without the structure of the original chemical, but I suspect that with google magic it can be found. 

This is all well and good, but the HSO3- doesn't have to get its oxygen from a water molecule, free dissolved oxygen (O2) is also acceptable. And we tend to use an excess of catalyst, to get ALL the nasty chlorine...Hence the potential to reduce oxygen incidentally, not much, but some. And if we add other things that do the same, or had a low oxygen environment to begin with, we can stress fish.

Edited January 17, 2021 by Brandy
spelling

[Brandy]

25 minutes ago, CT_ said:

In water ammonia exists as both ammonium and ammonia in a ratio that's dependent on pH and temperature.  I don't think there's a way to force it to exist more so as ammonium without changing pH or temp since the difference between the two is just whether or not a proton is hanging on or not.

Presumably the HSO3- creates excess H+ in the water, creating a surplus temporarily, thus the temporary effect of "binding" ammonia.

[CT_]

hmm so then the effectiveness would also depend on how well your tank is pH buffered?

[Brandy]

I don't know for sure, but I would assume that the hydrogen sulfite ion is reactive enough in most cases no matter the amount of buffer, but you might need slightly more? Most reactions of this kind dose to such an excess that there is so much more than you NEED to complete the target reaction... I know some people can smell the sulfur when it is working, generally I can't. Whether that is because it is less quick to react (more correctly, there is less for it to react WITH) in my low ammonia, very soft, low ph water, or if it is because after years of labwork I am nose-blind...Who can tell?😄

Edited January 17, 2021 by Brandy

[KoolFish97]

I use a auto water change carbon filter for my large 1000L (265 gallon) aquarium.

Changes at most 8L (2 gallons) a minute. But normally much less. I use ONLY carbon to dechlorinate. (Here in Australia chloromines are not purposefully added only "naturally" created so are very rare and normally non existent for us) But it goes through a Metre (3.3 feet) of PVC tube at 50mm round (2inch) so it isn't anywhere near a fridge filter. I wouldn't trust it to pass along the carbon (trick to using it to dechlorinate) enough for it all to be 99% gone or that it would get used up way to quickly to have to replace it regularly (carbon is "active" but once it hits chlorine debris etc it de-activates). 

 

Mine could according to my calculations get away with an easy and safe 6 months. But I change 1Kg of carbon (2.2 pounds) every 3 months to be sure incase anything crazy happened I didn't account for. 

So as you can see wouldn't trust it for regular reliable water changes. 

If your really concerned get rainwater! But really unless it's crazy over 1ppm ammonia your more than fine not to water change. You need ammonia in there anyhow haha.

(Hopefully my conversions from metric make sense for everyone in the US or non-metric countries! 😊)

 

[Coronal Mass Ejection Carl]

Seachem says that Prime doesn't convert ammonia to ammonium and instead forms an iminium salt. I think the reason so many people believe it converts ammonia to ammonium is because that's the only way the know of to detoxify ammonia.

Converting NH3 to NH4 without changing pH just isn't believable to me.