# "prime" alternative - cheap dechlorinator



## loachlady5 (Dec 9, 2007)

I'm considering whether to buy a cheaper dechlorinator. Actually, I'm on a "buy everything cheaper" kick. Is the other stuff in prime worth the extra money IYO? What would be the cheapest dechlorinator?


----------



## mpodolan (Mar 27, 2007)

I really believe that Prime is worth the money because it is actually concentrated, so you use less of it each time. Also, it gets rid of chloramines as well, which some others don't. Just my $0.02


----------



## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Prime is the least expensive, most effective option.

One can dechlorinate for cheaper by purchasing sodium thiosulfate crystals; however, it will only work for chlorine and will only dechlorinate, none of the other benefits that Prime offers. I use sodium thiosulfate to deactivate bleach, but would only use Prime for actually treating the water for the aquarium. 

There is great risk that if the water supplier would switch from chlorine to chloramine, suddenly sodium thiosulfate wouldn't be effective and you would have an aquarium full of dead fish. It's not worth the risk from my point of view.


----------



## loachlady5 (Dec 9, 2007)

Thanks guys. What's the biggest bottle of prime available? Maybe there is one bigger than the ones my LFS sells so I could buy in bulk.


----------



## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

I recently bought a 2L from Big Al's for $30 (it was on sale).


----------



## loachlady5 (Dec 9, 2007)

indiboi said:


> I recently bought a 2L from Big Al's for $30 (it was on sale).


Great! Thanks!


----------



## gsd78 (Jan 13, 2004)

They have Prime in 4L bottles as well. Paid about $52 for mine from Big Als.


----------



## fishscale (May 29, 2007)

What are you referring to that's cheaper than prime?


----------



## loachlady5 (Dec 9, 2007)

fishscale said:


> What are you referring to that's cheaper than prime?


Nothing really. Just wondering if there was anything.


----------



## stagius (Nov 26, 2007)

i dont like prime because it cause false reading in my NO3 test kit from API. Sulfur in Prime smell bad. Plus, dechlorinator need not to be that fancy. Just detoxify chlorine in water. 

I just switch to API decholorinator. They dont do any kind of fancy stuff like detoxify NO3- toxic found in other product.. who needs to detoxify NO3 in a planted tank ?


----------



## fishscale (May 29, 2007)

I think Prime is cheaper than Ammo Lock by volume.


----------



## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

stagius, while it's certainly your choice to use whichever dechlorination agent you wish to use, if you want something that works only for chlorine, you might as well just buy the sodium thiosulfate crystals and mix it up yourself. A pound of that will dechlorinate a "bajillion" gallons of water for $4 or so.


----------



## loachlady5 (Dec 9, 2007)

stagius said:


> i dont like prime because it cause false reading in my NO3 test kit from API...


Does it make it falsely low or high - I'm assuming low?


----------



## neilfishguy (Dec 16, 2007)

This should not happen I use API and prime with no issues.


----------



## NeverEndingNinja (Jan 4, 2008)

No, it shows you the NO3 that is still in the water column, but is locked up with Prime so it doesn't hurt the fish. Thats how I understand it, anyway.


----------



## loachlady5 (Dec 9, 2007)

NeverEndingNinja said:


> No, it shows you the NO3 that is still in the water column, but is locked up with Prime so it doesn't hurt the fish. Thats how I understand it, anyway.


So if the "locked up" NO3 still useable by plants?


----------



## NeverEndingNinja (Jan 4, 2008)

AFAIK, yes, and I believe this was confirmed by a Seachem rep on plantgeek.net

You can head over that way and post questions in the Seachem forum, they'll answer any questions you have there.


----------



## loachlady5 (Dec 9, 2007)

Thanks.


----------



## neilfishguy (Dec 16, 2007)

I am 99 percent sure the no3 does not get locked up- it is only no2 and nh4. But yes, it is still available. Another great aspect of prime! other no2 and nh4 products make it unusable starving your plants and bio filter.


----------



## loachlady5 (Dec 9, 2007)

neilfishguy said:


> ...other no2 and nh4 products make it unusable starving your plants and bio filter.


Thanks. What products are you referring to?


----------



## stagius (Nov 26, 2007)

neilfishguy: can you quote any source that might prove your statement ?
Plant love to uptake NH4+ as well. I don't think we should lock it.


----------



## neilfishguy (Dec 16, 2007)

stagius said:


> neilfishguy: can you quote any source that might prove your statement ?
> Plant love to uptake NH4+ as well. I don't think we should lock it.


Cool. It also kills fish so people lock it. But then it kills your bio filter. Its is a commonly know problem with things like ammo lock...


----------



## neilfishguy (Dec 16, 2007)

loachlady5 said:


> Thanks. What products are you referring to?


 ammolock and such


----------



## stagius (Nov 26, 2007)

Ammonia or ammonium ion did not kill fish. It only does when they are at high toxicity level. Plus, ammonium ion won't exist that long to harm fish, they will quickly turn into nitrate by bacteria in your filter.

But it never happen in a planted tank as plant will uptake ammonia, and all ammnium available. Seachem even sell flourish nitrogen, which contains ammonium ion as well.


----------



## neilfishguy (Dec 16, 2007)

stagius said:


> Ammonia or ammonium ion did not kill fish. It only does when they are at high toxicity level. Plus, ammonium ion won't exist that long to harm fish, they will quickly turn into nitrate by bacteria in your filter.
> 
> But it never happen in a planted tank as plant will uptake ammonia, and all ammnium available. Seachem even sell flourish nitrogen, which contains ammonium ion as well.


 
Flourish Nitrogen has bound ammonium that it availble to plants and biofilter. Like what happens as a result of prime.

Ammolock, on the otherhand, binds ammonia and it is not availble. Therfore starving and killing you biofilter. Now you cant get rid of the ammonia. Soon it is even higher than the start, and you have to do massive WC and start over the cycle.

Prime on the other hand, bind ammonia but allows it to be availble for biofilters. No problem there.

Prime is a much better product.


----------



## fishscale (May 29, 2007)

Those are two different things. Ammonia will kill your fish. The Seachem Prime FAQ confirms the things that neil is saying. However, they do not market Prime for the purpose of detoxifying nitrite or nitrate. I also read that Prime does not lock ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate. It detoxifies them by temporarily binding them. Supposedly, these bonds break down, so whatever ammonia is not consumed by your biofilter or plants by the time the bonds break will be re-released and will be harmful to fish again. If you are using a product to temporarily save fish from ammonia, then ammo-lock would be the way to go.

In a way, the false positive, is really a true positive; after using Prime, the ammonia indeed still exists. So when you test with your API kit, it shows up as existing, which it does.


----------



## neilfishguy (Dec 16, 2007)

fishscale said:


> Those are two different things. Ammonia will kill your fish. The Seachem Prime FAQ confirms the things that neil is saying. However, they do not market Prime for the purpose of detoxifying nitrite or nitrate. I also read that Prime does not lock ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate. It detoxifies them by temporarily binding them. Supposedly, these bonds break down, so whatever ammonia is not consumed by your biofilter or plants by the time the bonds break will be re-released and will be harmful to fish again. If you are using a product to temporarily save fish from ammonia, then ammo-lock would be the way to go.


Yeah, the temp binding is what I mean. It is still better than ammolock because it will give biofilter some time to take some ammonia out then you can does more. Prime does market for detox of nitrite. Read the bottle! says you can dose a 5x dose in nitrite emrgency. Great multitasking product!

Ammolock causes more harm then good.Search tera ammolock on google and you will see. Better to use prime and WC. Ammolock also gives false reading so you are really in the dark. Chances are it would have been better to just WC.


----------



## fishscale (May 29, 2007)

Q: I am using Prime™ to control ammonia but my test kit says it is not doing anything, in fact it looks like it added ammonia! What is going on?
A: A Nessler based kit will not read ammonia properly if you are using Prime™... it will look "off scale", sort of a muddy brown (incidentally a Nessler kit will not work with any other products similar to Prime™). A salicylate based kit can be used, but with caution. Under the conditions of a salicylate kit the ammonia-Prime complex will be broken down eventually giving a false reading of ammonia (same as with other products like Prime™), so the key with a salicylate kit is to take the reading right away. However, the best solution ;-) is to use our MultiTest: Ammonia™ kit... it uses a gas exchange sensor system which is not affected by the presence of Prime™ or other similar products. It also has the added advantage that it can detect the more dangerous free ammonia and distinguish it from total ammonia (which is both the free and ionized forms of ammonia (the ionized form is not toxic)).

Q:I tested my tap water after using Prime and came up with an ammonia reading. Is this because of chloramine? Could you explain how this works in removing chloramine?
A: Prime works by removing chlorine from the water and then binds with ammonia until it can be consumed by your biological filtration (chloramine minus chlorine = ammonia). The bond is not reversible and ammonia is still available for your bacteria to consume. Prime will not halt your cycling process.
I am going to assume that you were using a liquid based reagent test kit (Nessler based, silica). Any type of reducing agent or ammonia binder (dechlorinators, etc) will give you a false positive. You can avoid this by using our Multitest Ammonia kit (not affected by reducing agents) or you can wait to test, Prime dissipates from your system within 24 hours.

Q: How does Prime make a difference in reducing Nitrates?
A: The detoxification of nitrite and nitrate by Prime (when used at elevated levels) is not well understood from a mechanistic standpoint. The most likely explanation is that the nitrite and nitrate is removed in a manner similar to the way ammonia is removed; i.e. it is bound and held in a inert state until such time that bacteria in the biological filter are able to take a hold of it, break it apart and use it. Two other possible scenarios are reduction to nitrogen (N2) gas or conversion into a benign organic nitrogen compound.
I wish we had some more "concrete" explanation, but the end result is the same, it does actually detoxify nitrite and nitrate. This was unexpected chemically and thus initially we were not even aware of this, however we received numerous reports from customers stating that when they overdosed with Prime they were able to reduce or eliminate the high death rates they experienced when their nitrite and nitrate levels were high. We have received enough reports to date to ensure that this is no fluke and is in fact a verifiable function of the product.


----------



## neilfishguy (Dec 16, 2007)

Yeah, I see that but when I cycled I had.5 ppm ammonia. 25 minutes later,after prime, same thing. I personally get accurate ammonia readings with prime.


----------



## neilfishguy (Dec 16, 2007)

neilfishguy said:


> I am 99 percent sure the no3 does not get locked up- it is only no2 and nh4. But yes, it is still available. Another great aspect of prime! other no2 and nh4 products make it unusable starving your plants and bio filter.


Well I was wrong,:icon_redf no3 also. I stand by my assertion that ammolock is bad.


----------



## crazy loaches (Sep 29, 2006)

neilfishguy said:


> Well I was wrong,:icon_redf no3 also. I stand by my assertion that ammolock is bad.


Well I wouldnt put much faith in it personally.



> I wish we had some more "concrete" explanation, but the end result is the same, it does actually detoxify nitrite and nitrate. This was unexpected chemically and thus initially we were not even aware of this, however we received numerous reports from customers stating that when they overdosed with Prime they were able to reduce or eliminate the high death rates they experienced when their nitrite and nitrate levels were high. We have received enough reports to date to ensure that this is no fluke and is in fact a verifiable function of the product.


It seems they dont really know, and are relying on feedback from folks telling them that their fish stopped dying from high nitrate levels? There are a multitude of things I could say wrong about that. It seems to be handy for detoxifying ammonia and nitrite, which have the potential to be quite harmful, but there really shouldnt be a need to detoxify no3 with chemicals IMO...

It does smell nasty though.

As far as cheaper alternatives, the aforementioned sodium thiosulfate is about it. I havent run the numbers in a while but Genesis is also comparably concentrated and cheap. However these are all chlorine-only conditioners.

For the sake of discussion another cheap solution (but still chlorine only) is something like I have plumbed into may auto water changer, an inline carbon filter. The ones I have from BFS are rated at 20,000 gallons and $10.99 (of course the plumbing and housing and such cost more).


----------



## swylie (May 10, 2007)

Don't forget that it's possible to remove chlorine by aging your water. I think that I've read that it takes a day or two for the chlorine to dissipate, but of course that would depend on a number of factors, including how much surface movement there is in your holding tank.

However, if your ultimate goal is to save money, I'd look elsewhere. I'm sure you have other expenses in your life where there's a greater potential savings.


----------



## stagius (Nov 26, 2007)

so even prime block up NO3 or not, it is still usable for plant ? 

I test my NO3 with API test kit. The color first say like 10ppm. I added few drop of Prime, it become clear after a while.


----------



## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

Ammonia/um, Nitrite, & Nitrate are all still usable to the plants when in the detoxified state that Prime puts them into. 

If this was really a problem you have to realize that we'd not use it and would have found a better alternative. 

This hobby is probably the best in that regard, you have this collective intellect that puts forth massive energy to solving problems and then will freely share the solution with the rest of the world.


----------



## crazy loaches (Sep 29, 2006)

Yeah and with RO/DI you can treat for chloramines also. For me I didnt see the need to spend for the whole RO/DI but can always upgrade later, I already have the plumbing run and two 10" housings (a sediment filter and the carbon filter). I first planned on doing water ageing, and discussed it on here, but the opinion given and ultimately what I decided was inline carbon was more reliable and less equipment to worry about. If you already have extra pumps, float switch, holding tank, etc, then it would be easy to setup.


----------



## g8wayg8r (Dec 24, 2003)

I remember reading an article in Consumer Reports on shaving cream a decade or two ago. They did their comparisons and in the end they concluded that it's really a matter of preference because one can last so long and even paying twice the price for what you like was hardly a factor. 

The active ingredient in dechlorinaters is sodium thiosulfate. I use Tetra Aquasafe. For some reason I've had trouble with algae every time I've gone to something different. Dumb luck? Probably, but I'm not changing again. If you really want to go cheap, mix you own. I've got a bag of crystals and I use it when I wash porous hardware that's been bleached. I know people that do and have had great success using it after water changes. No fish deaths. They also have algae problems too. Coincidence as well but it's one more superstition that keeps me using Aquasafe.

Here's a DIY link:
http://www.petsforum.com/cis-fishnet/afm/G29151.htm


----------



## imeridian (Jan 19, 2007)

There perhaps should be some care used with the term dechlorinator in this context. As I mentioned, as did others, sodium thiosulfate will not give the intended result if chloramines are being used. A lot of those so-called chloramine removers just break the bond, take care of the chlorine and then leave the ammonia completely untreated. That's bad, obviously. At 2 drops per gallon for treating water, Prime cannot be beat by anything other than the sodium thiosulfate crystals -- which Prime is not based on and that Prime is frankly worlds better than.


----------



## lauraleellbp (Feb 3, 2008)

I've used Tetra dechlors since I was a kid and always had good results with them. Only thing I've ever used any different was something called Zip that I got 1/2 price refills from my LFS back in college- then went back to Tetra Aquasafe. 

I also have never had bad algae issues? Occasional brown during the winter and a little GSA during the summer- but nothing big. I wonder?

Bottle reads:
sodium hydroxymethane sulflinate
polyvinyl pyrollidones
organic hydrocolloids
organic chelating compounds

"AquaSafe makes tap water safe for fish by neutralizing chlorine and heavy metals present in municipal water supplies. AquaSafe also neutralizes chloramine by breaking down the bond between chlorine and ammonia while reducing both the fish-toxic chlorine and ammonia components. Additionally, AquaSafe povides a slime coating to help wounds heal and protect fish from abrasions... AquaSafe will not remove ammonia from an uncycled, overstocked, or under-filtered aquarium."

I was NOT a chem major- think that there may really be a chemical relationship with algae growth?


----------



## neilfishguy (Dec 16, 2007)

stagius said:


> so even prime block up NO3 or not, it is still usable for plant ?
> .


Everything is still usable after using prime. NO3 may or may not be blocked. It does not say it is on the bottle, but on the website they say maybe.


----------



## SPC (Jan 14, 2008)

I find this to be a good article on this subject:
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cach...utgassing&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us&lr=lang_en

...and another:

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_chlorine.htm



crazy loaches said:


> Yeah and with RO/DI you can treat for chloramines also. For me I didnt see the need to spend for the whole RO/DI but can always upgrade later, I already have the plumbing run and two 10" housings (a sediment filter and the carbon filter). I first planned on doing water ageing, and discussed it on here, but the opinion given and ultimately what I decided was inline carbon was more reliable and less equipment to worry about. If you already have extra pumps, float switch, holding tank, etc, then it would be easy to setup.


How do you determine when the carbon is exhausted?

Steve


----------



## crazy loaches (Sep 29, 2006)

Well, you can always measure it with a chlorine test. And it has a 20,000g life expectancy, so you can calculate it. When it starts approaching that I'd start doing an occasional chlorine test. For my tank, 20,000g would be around 2.5 yrs, so I havent really given it a whole lot of thought yet (just started it about a month ago).


----------



## SPC (Jan 14, 2008)

crazy loaches said:


> Well, you can always measure it with a chlorine test.


True.

*And it has a 20,000g life expectancy, so you can calculate it. When it starts approaching that I'd start doing an occasional chlorine test. For my tank, 20,000g would be around 2.5 yrs, so I havent really given it a whole lot of thought yet (just started it about a month ago).*

There are alot of variables that can come into play for the actual useful life of these filters.

Is this filter NSF rated? I ask this because the NSF (and one other organization that does not have as stringent guide lines as the NSF) are the only groups that test these filters. Unfortunately this industry is not regulated by the EPA, and therefore I understand can get away with throwing out less than honest numbers on their filters if they wish to.

Steve


----------



## crisrisl (Jan 16, 2007)

Has no one ever used ClorAm-X?

from Jehmco

At some point, I calculated the gallons/dollar between Prime, Amquel, and ClorAm-x and the ClorAm-X came out the cheapest. I think anyway...I don't have the figures anymore.

An Swylie, re water aging? Yes, chlorine will outgas. So aging water, with an airstone in the aging tank will remove chlorine. But it does nothing for chloramine, so you have to know what your water supplier treats with first.

I think, if your purpose is just to remove chlorine...RO/DI is not the way to go. Especially for plants, but why waste water to make RO that won't have the nutrients in the water...just to get rid of chlorine?


----------

