Mathematicians Required, Dechlorinator Dilution Calculation!

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Blobfish said:
18-19:1 ratio is correct. Honestly tho its really hard to overdose dechlor. Your talking like 5x the normal doseage or more. I know standard dechlor (sodium thiosulfate) is not anything to worry about. I mix it from dry occasionally but I rarely use dechlor anyway. When I do I don't measure it unless its Prime and thats more about cost. Prime I know is safe up to 5x regular doseage, sodium thiosulfate is probably higher. A regular dose of dechlor is almost always way more then your tank will need to dechlorinate since they are dosed for the absolute max chlorine levels allow by law, which is a lot more then usually comes out of a standard tap. So either way there is lots of unused dechlor in the tank. If you dose 5x regular you might see a slight bump to TDS.
 
Do you know what is in water conditioners that are advertised as doing such as removing chloramine and heavy metals? Does sodium thiosulfate do that as well or would you need to use something else for that?  What is it that is in the conditioners that helps the slime coating?  
They all contain sodium thiosulfate others just have additional ingredients. Most brands are pretty tight about not saying what they contain, Prime for example. For dealing with ammonia released from chloramines most conditioners just change NH3 to NH4 since thats the easiest way to deal with ammonia toxicity. This is only a temporary effect, even prime will only guard against ammonia for 48 hours before they suggest redosing it as NH4 will eventually go back to NH3 given pH and whatever exact compounds they use to do this. Prime I know reduces heavy metals, their toxicity is related to their charge so reducing the charge on the ions reduces the toxicity. There are a couple things used for 'slime coating' all IMO are either marketing gimicks or more harm then good since there is absolutely no reason for a healthy fish to have trouble with producing a slime coat. Many use aloe vera or hydrocolloids for this.

I have chloramines and like 0.25-0.5ppm ammonia in my tap and I don't bother with any type of dechlor 98% of the time. My water does need to stand for pH to stabilize but after that it goes straight into the tank. At my last location I used it straight from the tap w/o dechlor as well. High organics will bind up chlorine in no time and the filter and plants will deal with the ammonia very quickly. You also have to calculate I dose dry fertilizers so when I do use dechlor its usually the very basic sodium thiosulfate I have mixed. Copper, iron, ect while heavy metals are still essential elements and rather not add anything that tries to make them less reactive. If I do use dechlor its always dosed according to my chloramine levels which is about 1/4-1/2 the regular dose. You have to realize dechlors treat ALOT, regular dose of prime treats 1ppm NH3, 4ppm chloramines, and 5ppm chlorine. The legal limit for the last two are 4ppm in the US. Average levels at a tap are 0.5-2ppm. Then you need to factor in the dilution when you change water. My tap has 1.8ppm chloramines/chlorine reported. After a 50% water change the tank only has 0.9ppm and now a regular dose of prime and pretty much any dechlor out there is 4-5 times what is required. Adding a regular dose or double dose isn't going to hurt anything, I simply don't because its not necessary. I go years between 500mL bottles of prime. I have a pound of dry sodium thiosulfate and I might need more in a decade.
 
Thanks for your explanations GRD1985, very interesting reading indeed!
 
 Now I've just tipped 2 Litres of water out of the tumble drier condenser tray and by rights (at least in my mind) this is distilled water or is it not? I did the usual tests from the API master kit:-  Ph 7,  Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0. Can anyone see any reason why this would not be suitable for the use of diluting concentrated dechlorinator and If I go on and pass it through a jug style water filter that should make it even more fit for purpose wouldn't it as it would most certainly be Chlorine free
 
KirkyArcher said:
Any brainboxes out there who'd be willing to help me? I would like to dilute my concentrated dechlorinator with water the idea to fill a 1 litre bottle that will enable me to dose around 5ml for every 20 litres of water, The concentrate states that 10 ml will treat 750 litres (1 ml = 75 litres) I currently measure the dose via the divisions marked on a 5 ml syringe but fear I'll O/D , Now I've tried to work it out but I must admit Mathematics it's not my strong point and my brain starts to hurt, Main reason I want to persue this is as stated earlier I'd really not want to overdose even though slight overdosing of dechlorinator is usually deemed acceptable, 
 
 
conc new = 5mL treats 20 L or 1mL treats 4L or 0.25mL treats 1L
 
conc old = 10mL treats 750L or 1 mL treats 75L dosage or  0.01333mL treats 1L
 
So you want to dilute your concentrate to yield a volume that will go from 1mL per 75L dosage to a 1mL per 4L dosage.
Your new concentrate will need 75/4 mLs to dose to the same level. This is 18.75mL
 
(To confirm - 18.75mL of 1mL per 4L concentration = 75L treated.)
 
So now you know that you would need 18.75mL of your new concentration to treat the same volume of water.
All that is needed now is to dilute your original concentrate by a factor of 18.75.
1L of your old concentrate added to 17.75L of water to make a total of 18.75L
 
(To confirm:
1L of your old concentrate treats 75,000L
18.75L of your new concentrate contains 1L of your old concentrate so this 18.75L treats 75,000L
18.75L treats 75,000L or 18.75mL treats 75L or 0.25mL treats 1L or 1ml treats 4L or 5mL treats 20mL.)
 
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