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fish dechlorinator

  • Thread starter naich
  • Start date
can i use the dehlorinators used for fresh water fish...the one i have does minerals and chlorine...so i guess its all good?
 
No. Dechlorinators are unnecessary - chlorine evaporates in a matter of minutes after water is exposed to open air - and water conditioners for fish actually make the minerals in the water worse so far as CPs are concerned. You need water that's actually filtered; distilled water, reverse osmosis water, or rainwater (which is effectively distilled.) There's no real substitute, unless your tap water is already clean enough for CPs.
~Joe
 
so leaving tap water out for a day is okay?
 
No, that doesn't help at all. Leaving tap water out for a day is exactly as effective as leaving it out for ten minutes - which is to say that the only thing it gets rid of is chlorine. Chlorine isn't a huge problem for carnivorous plants, though, so it doesn't get you anywhere. On the other hand, a little bit of water evaporates off when you leave it out, which actually raises the concentration of dissolved solids in the water. So really, if leaving it out makes any difference at all, it's making the water worse.
You MUST use rainwater (collected from a clean surface, not out of a stream or puddle or something) or water filtered through distillation or reverse osmosis. Everybody tries to cut corners here when they're starting out, and it doesn't work in the long run. A gallon of reverse osmosis or filtered water costs like 40¢ at the grocery store; a home reverse osmosis filter costs about $100. Finding a way to skip filtered water really just isn't worth the savings.
There are people who succeed without filtered water, but most of them learned to do so through lots of trial and error, and the rest were probably just lucky to live in a place with really soft tap water. Until you've learned enough about soil chemistry and botany to understand the scientific reasons behind why hard water is harmful to CPs, I would suggest ignoring anyone who says that you should use tap water, brand-name bottled water, etc. And anyone who tells you to use boiled water is badly misinformed - there's simply no reason why boiling would help.
~Joe

PS - Note that, while chlorine evaporates quickly from water and is relatively harmless to houseplants, some municipal water supplies use chloramine, a chlorine-based chemical which doesn't evaporate. I don't know if it's hazardous to CPs in particular, but I know many houseplants dislike it. I think there's some common household substance that can be used to break it down, but I don't remember what.
 
Chlorine evaporates, but don't chloramines stay in unless run through at least a carbon filter ?
 
Chlorine and mineral salts in tap water are two different things. Secondly, taking care of fish and taking care of cp's are also different things. Don't use tap water at all. Just buy distilled water at like Walmart, for ~85 cents a gallon.
 
It depends on your tap water. If the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) is under 100 parts per million (ppm), ideally under 50 ppm then you can probably use it. Some people are fortunate to live in areas where the water is very pure.

Have your water tested, buy a TDS meter or get a water quality survey done. Your utility company may supply the survey for free.

Or just play it safe and follow the advice in the previous posts.
 
According to the label on my fish dechlorinator, the active ingredient is a sodium compound, which I would imagine to be very harmful to cps.
 
A water conditioner is merely an ion exchanger - you're substituting heavy metal ions iron and copper - which are very harmful to fish (more so to invertebrates) for relatively harmless sodium and potassium ions. In the case of CPs however these are every bit as noxious as dissolved calcium - the most common dissolved substrate in water and the cause for scale. In essence you're adding a fairly concentrated sodium solution to your water which - from the point of your plants, puts you back at square one. As some people have suggested: Get yourself some distilled water or RO. Good luck and Happy New Year.
 
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