Fresh from the Swap

i you are doing a 25% water change or less with out chloaramines, and you do not submerge your hose into your tank so that the water is sprayed onto the surface of the fish tank (lots of agitation) you do not need to use a dechlor product. 

Been doing it that way on a massive scale for 20 years.  I only dechlor when I do big changes.

My logic on this is you're only adding chlorinated water, the water in the tank has already been de-chlorinated.

I always dechlor for the amount of the water changed. So for your water change scenario, 1tsp.

I've always dechlored for total tank volume not for water changed( gets diluted), never lost a fish to a water change in 35 years..extra insurance..4tsp!

I always dechlor for the amount of the water changed. So for your water change scenario, 1tsp.

There's a bit of a chlorine smell first time the tap is opened in the morning. 

I normally just eyeball the dechlorinator. They got at least 50% extra last water change.  I just plain stressed them to death I think.

Here's a question:  When adding water conditioner, do you dose for the entire tank volume or just for the amount of water changed?

Most products call for something like 1 tsp per 10 gallons.  If I have a 40 gal tank and do a 25% water change, should I be adding 1tsp or 4tsp?

Thanks for all the responses,

-Brandon

Hey BC,
You're right next door to me, go to your tap and turn it on full blast and smell, mine has been smelling like more chlorine lately and most municipalities and extra to the mix when the water table is really high if not flooding, you may not have added enough declor when you did the change, you'll have to add extra and put the new water in a little slower

The LiveAquaria method sounds pretty good.  I don't like the part about floating the bag before beginning the trickle process, though.  After a swap or auction, the bags are often very cold.  Floating cold bags in a tank seems like it would heat them up much too quickly.  The whole point of trickling is to avoid sudden changes.

Also, they also don't say anything about gradually increasing the drip rate.  If you drip at 2 to 4 drops per second throughout the entire process, it'll take so long that all the heat that suddenly got put into the water by floating the bag will dissipate, and you'll be back at room temperature long before you're done trickling..

Trickling isn't without its risk either, what chemistry and get screwed up very fast in a bag, but i use the trickle method, or what i call the saltwater method on all my fish. But i add a 1/2 cup every 5 mins and when the bag gets full i dump some water out and do that method 2 or 3 times, usually takes me a hour to do, but i haven't lost a freshwater or even any of my saltwater fish from this process.

I use this process from Live Aquaria... they also have steps for the drip method. www.liveaquaria.com/PIC/article.cfm?aid=157

I start at something like one or two drops per second, and gradually crank it up to full blast by about the third bailing.  Sometimes I pull the valve off the end of the hose at that point.

When you first got them home, did you trickle acclimate or just float the bags?  If you floated the bags, there's a chance that the fish were already in trouble and the water change just pushed them over the edge.

This makes sense.

I normally just float the bags.  With these I did a half-assed trickle acclimation,  adding a few ounces of aquarium water to the bag every 5 minutes or so until the bag was nearly full then straining them through a net to discard the bag water, then dropped in the tank.  Whole process was maybe 25 minutes. might have stressed them more than if I had just put them straight in.

With your trickle setup how fast do you let the water drip in? Drops per minute or..? Definitely something I can make with supplies on hand.

My water is tap water.  Lake Michigan water treated by Chicago and sold to the DuPage water commision, pumped 30 miles to Lisle.  As far as I can tell they just use chlorine,  no chloramine, so I shouldn't have gotten an ammonia spike by using the ST water conditioner.

I'm thinking they were just overstressed and the water change finished them off.  The rest of the Compressiceps are looking good today, no new deaths overnight.