Water conditioners in shrimp tank

Jackie · Post by **Jackie** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 2:36 pm

I read an interesting thing today on an aquaristic forum - a seller in a petshop claims that water conditioners can be hazardous to shrimp. Unfortunately, he didn't say why, but I'll try to find this out.

Now, I use water conditioners and never found them doing any harm to shrimp - am I just pure lucky or is the seller telling fairy tales?

Bradimus · Post by **Bradimus** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 6:24 pm

I know that declorinators are toxic to daphnia. It would not be unreasonable to think this extends to shrimp.

Jackie · Post by **Jackie** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 4:57 am

Bradimus wrote:I know that declorinators are toxic to daphnia. It would not be unreasonable to think this extends to shrimp.

"Toxic" means poisonous? Because today i heard another interesting story - some conditioners form a kind of "jello" in water. This "jello" may be dangerous to shrimp, especially the filtering kind, as it may stick to the body and cause the shrimp to die.

???

???

Bradimus · Post by **Bradimus** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:11 am

Jackie wrote: "Toxic" means poisonous?

Yes

cich · Post by **cich** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 3:56 am

So the alternative is setting the water out for 24+hours... What if I have chloramines and NEED to use a dechlorinator?

Bradimus · Post by **Bradimus** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 7:07 am

Dialysis machines use carbon and ascorbic acid (carbon is easier) to remove chloriamines from the water supply. Carbon should also remove the dechlorinator as well.

amanda_h · Post by **amanda_h** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 10:04 am

I use Prime to dechlor every time I do a water change, and I've never had any problems with ill effects. In fact, I add the Prime to the tank, and then add the water straight from the tap. No problems.

theshrimp_123 · Post by **theshrimp_123** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 1:25 pm

Every water change i use dechlorinator. Nothing ever happens to my shrimp.

Hmmmmmm....................

51Cornell · Post by **51Cornell** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 4:54 pm

Some water conditioners (Tetra AquaSafe for sure) have far more "stress coat" (the slime stuff) in it than others. Awhile back, there was a brief discussion on this and it seems some conditioners are okay with inverts while others aren't.

cich · Post by **cich** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 10:06 pm

I'd be very interested in which ones are safe. I don't want to loose any rare shrimp

I have access to Seachem Prime

theshrimp_123 · Post by **theshrimp_123** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 7:46 am

I use wardleys dechlorinator. That seems safe. And its a straight liquid no jelly. I had no problems.

cich · Post by **cich** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:21 pm

I too use a liquid-only dechlorinator. It says it removes heavy metals, but that shouldn't be a problem since heavy metals are bad for shrimp anyways!

Post by **Mustafa** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 2:25 pm

Why use any treatment at all? I have lived in two different cities here in the US and also in Germany and I never used any treatment. If you are not doing complete water changes every time your tank will be just fine.

I don't know what the case is with chloramine, since I don't think that I have ever lived anywhere where my water contained chloramine (though I never checked, so there might actually be chloramine in my water supply right now).

I am a proponent of the "hands off" approach. The fewer chemicals you put into the water, the better.

Mustafa

cich · Post by **cich** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 9:48 pm

Mustafa wrote:Why use any treatment at all? I have lived in two different cities here in the US and also in Germany and I never used any treatment. If you are not doing complete water changes every time your tank will be just fine.

I don't know what the case is with chloramine, since I don't think that I have ever lived anywhere where my water contained chloramine (though I never checked, so there might actually be chloramine in my water supply right now).

I am a proponent of the "hands off" approach. The fewer chemicals you put into the water, the better.

Mustafa

Why not? Because of the chloramine, just like I said!

If you don't know, then why take the risk? Chloramine is BAD.
Yes though, it's the bigger cities that do it more. They use it because it's more stable than just chlorine gas. So stable infact, that the only way to get it out is R/O or treatment.

51Cornell · Post by **51Cornell** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 2:25 pm

They do use chloramines in our tap water here (even announced it so we fish-keepers could know in advance). After losing fish when using Amquel and Tetra Aquasafe, we stopped using those. For our fish, we now use Jungle A.C.E. which doesn't seem to add an artificial slime coat (however, it seems to work best if you let the stuff work on the water a few hours before adding to fish). When we do our twice-weekly or weekly fish tank cleanings, we reserve the water and use it on the shrimp tanks. Whatever chems went into the fish water seems to get neutralized enough between the fish and the plants and the bacteria so inverts are not adversely affected. We also use this same used fish water on our daphnia cultures. Otherwise, we'd have to use bottles of spring water. Oh, fish tank water is qualified by "healthy fish tanks with no medicines, salt, or sickness."