# Water conditioner not working???



## fisherman (Apr 22, 2010)

so i am trying to dechlorinize the water with some nutrafin aqua plus, but the water still smells like chlorine a bit.... i dosed it 3 times(10ml) already and waited a few hours... the water is sitting in a rubber maid bin being circulated with a power head.. did i get a bad batch of water conditioner or something??? need this water to be safe for my fries..


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## charles (Apr 21, 2010)

check the expire date on the aqua+


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## Victor (Apr 21, 2010)

chlorine is minimal in Vancouver waters and I do not believe it is that easy to detect by just smelling it. Are you sure it is chlorine that you are smelling?


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## fisherman (Apr 22, 2010)

not sure if its chlorine i smell but it sure does smell like bleach which, i assume is chlorine since it comes out of our tap.. the aqua+ was just bought last week so im pretty sure its not expired yet..


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## Morainy (Apr 21, 2010)

Some days my water smells so strongly of chlorine that I can smell it from several feet away from the tap. We're close to a point where the city sometimes tops up the chlorine. I thought that would change with the new water purification process and it has gotten better, but lately we've had several knock-you-over-with-the-bleach days. I find that adding water conditioner doesn't take the whole smell away then; I usually add extra. I'm not sure if the chlorine has been neutralized and still smells, but I just add extra dechlorinator anyway.


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## dsouthworth (Nov 21, 2011)

There's no harm in double dosing..


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## jobber (May 14, 2010)

fisherman said:


> so i am trying to dechlorinize the water with some nutrafin aqua plus, but the water still smells like chlorine a bit.... i dosed it 3 times(10ml) already and waited a few hours... the water is sitting in a rubber maid bin being circulated with a power head.. did i get a bad batch of water conditioner or something??? need this water to be safe for my fries..


Relating to the fish tank, chlorine in it's natural state is gaseous. The chlorine added into our tap water is in liquid or powder form. As it mixes into the water system and out of our taps, the moment the water is exposed to the atmosphere (air), the chlorine will evaporate.

What you're smelling is a good sign that the chlorine is evaporating out from the tap water and not allowed to mix longer than is required in your fish tank.

If you're putting water back into the tank with water straight from the tank, it is better to let the water waterfall back into the tank so the tap water is exposed to the air; rather than placing the hose directly into the water inside the tank where the chlorine stays in the water column longer.

Not going into chemistry too deep, the water conditioner dechlorifies the chlorine by unbinding the molecules so the chlorine is oxidized becoming a gas.

I would not worry about smelling chlorine an issue, it's a good sign that it's evaporating.

As for the expiration of water conditioner, I've used expired (1 year) water conditioners without any ill effects; however, since there is aloe vera in some of the conditioners, just smell it to see if it's spoiled especially if you keep it in a place where it's been in the sun and essentially cooked. It'll smell something like a rotten egg.

I don't know why you would still smell chlorine after a few hours other than the fact that the rubbermaid bin or something has been bleached.

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## charles (Apr 21, 2010)

it has nothing to do with when you bought the aquaC+. There was a member here selling new bottles of AquaC+ for dirt cheap. I checked the bottles (brand new unopened) and there were 2 types of expiring date on them. One sep/2011, and the other one jan/2012. I don't mind getting them as I used them up faster than anyone else as I services many tanks for commerical business. I would just check the expire date on the bottle just to be saved.


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## Jasonator (Jul 12, 2011)

When in doubt, leave it out.

24hrs in a clean bucket/bin (with no lid, of course) and the chlorine is gone. 

I started doing this a while back when I switched water treatment brands and noticed sustained bubbles on the surface of all my tanks. I didn't like it. 
So I changed my ways a bit to filling a bucket and leaving it out. This works great for top-ups, but with water changes, I use treatment because I'm too cheap to buy another heater and keep the bucket water warm enough to put directly in the tanks


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## Morainy (Apr 21, 2010)

This has been a very interesting thread for me. I never knew that water conditioner could expire and have never checked the expiry date. Ever. In, like, 30 years.


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## jbyoung00008 (May 16, 2011)

Morainy you are asking some great questions on here. In my opinion I agree with what most people are saying. Vancouver has some of the best tap water in the world. I find a lot of the information we read on the internet is from the USA where not every city has great water like we do. I have read aquarium books that state the use of tap water conditioner is not needed. However I do use water conditioner on all my tanks but there is times when I forget to add it with no harm done to my fish. I will also tell you that I have bleached pieces of drift wood and some of my filter pipes in a bucket with water and bleach. I soak them for a bit than I dump out the bleach. Refill the bucket with water and aqua plus conditioner to do dechlorinize the wood and pipes. I was told this method by a LFS and was a little skeptical at first but I went ahead and tried it and sure enough no dead fish or plants. So I wouldnt be too worried about the tap water here having chlorine at high amounts that your water conditioner isnt removing it. The amount of bleach I added was way more than you would ever see in our tap water. The aqua plus had no issues declorinizing it.


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## braveson123 (Jul 1, 2012)

Firstly check the expiry date then try to open it and clean rubber made bin gently with Luke warm water to remove chlorine from surface.After doing all this smell must be gone from this!!maid service vancouver


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## waxbytes (Jun 12, 2012)

I find that if I get a strong smell of bleach (chlorine) that I can still smell it several hours after it is gone.
The smell seems to linger in my nose, (smell memory?)


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## Fish rookie (May 21, 2012)

From what I understand--and please correct me if I am wrong-- water conditioner is important mainly because benefical bacteria has a chance to be killed by the chloramine if we do not use it. Also, if your pipes are old and the water has been sitting in the pipe for a while, heavy metal might have harmful effect on your fish and shrimps. Leaving your water overnight cannot naturalize chloramine or metal.
I do not believe chlorine can stay in your water for long if you leave it sitting for a long time so you should not be able to smell it very strongly--may be your bucket was bleached or perhaps if you are using prime it was the smell of prime that you smelled?


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## hp10BII (Apr 23, 2010)

Fish rookie said:


> From what I understand--and please correct me if I am wrong-- water conditioner is important mainly because benefical bacteria has a chance to be killed by the chloramine if we do not use it. Also, if your pipes are old and the water has been sitting in the pipe for a while, heavy metal might have harmful effect on your fish and shrimps. Leaving your water overnight cannot naturalize chloramine or metal.
> I do not believe chlorine can stay in your water for long if you leave it sitting for a long time so you should not be able to smell it very strongly--may be your bucket was bleached or perhaps if you are using prime it was the smell of prime that you smelled?


True, leaving water overnight will not neutralize chloramine and trace metals, but our local water supply does not use cloramines.

FAQs, Quality, Waterworks, Engineering Services, City of Vancouver


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## Fish rookie (May 21, 2012)

Thanks for the link. What I heard is that they used to add only chlorine but then they started adding chloramine. But that is just what I heard. I would think they must add more than just chloride during the water treatment process...


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## 2wheelsx2 (Apr 21, 2010)

Fish rookie said:


> Thanks for the link. What I heard is that they used to add only chlorine but then they started adding chloramine. But that is just what I heard. I would think they must add more than just chloride during the water treatment process...


This is a very old thread. But no, they don't add chloramines here. What we have are sediment filtration, UV, ozone and primary and secondary chlorination, depending on the source and the delivery area. Chloramines aren't really needed with our water source. All this information is readily available from metrovancouver.org. Here are all the reports from 2011, if anyone cares to read them. Quality & Treatment 
Multi-element trace analysis, residual chlorine, etc. etc.


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