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Water Chemistry

Questions of Chemistry

This is a big one. There are all kinds of chemicals that you could buy to put in your aquarium, however, most of these are unnecessary.

Porbably the only two I would recommend for the beginner are a dechlorinator and an Ichthyophthirius (Ick or Ich) medication.

• The first will help you with your water changes. Before adding new water to the aquarium, you will need to treat it to neutralize any chlorine or chloramine in the water so that it will not harm your fish or your biological filter. There are many different products on the market, and would recommend one of the droplet types. They are easy to use and usually fairly cheap.
• The Ick medicine... Well, I think that it is just something you have to have. You will get Ick, not may, but will. Save yourself some headache and pick up some medication before you have a problem. This is really about the only diagnostic or treatment recommendation I will give out, because Ick is abotu the only illness that can be realiably diagnosed accurately by a non-veterinarian. Get a product with Malachite Green as the active ingredient. It is the best stuff I have found. Personally I would recommend QuICK Cure by Aquarium Products (this is probably about the only product endorsement you will see here unless I decide to start doing product reviews). I have had the best luck with this. It can usually treat ich in just a couple of days.

The most common chemistry questions I get are about pH. Either someone has used a pH buffer to try to adjust the pH in their tank, and has had disastrous results, or someone is trying to figure out how to adjust their pH unnecessarily. Other people are trying to troubleshoot pH changes or differences between the pH in their source water and their aquarium water. Many people don't seem to realize that most fish live in water with a wide range of pH, and very few fish require any specific pH.

The second most common question I receive about chemicals for the aquarium is in regard to ammonia eliminators and ammonia detoxifiers. Like pH adjusters, chemicals to remove or neutralize ammonia are unnecessary and are likely to cause more problems than they solve.

I also get a lot of questions about bacteria boosters and why many people don't seem to get any benefit from them—or seem to have disastrous results from using them, even if they only use them once or twice. Even though bacteria boosters are not really chemicals, I though this would be a good place to list them...

Many people also have questions about dechlorinators or chlorine neutralizers and how to dechlorinate the water for their aquariums.

My snail mail address is: Keith Seyffarth, 730 West Galena, Butte, MT 59701.
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Page most recently modified: January 13 2008 19:07:54.