Question About Water Maintenance In Regular Bowl

[Wikipedian]

Hi, everyone! I'm new to the world of Betta fish and new to these forums, so let me know if I should be posting this somewhere else but here's my question:

I am just cleaning out my Betta's bowl for the first time (it's just a regular plastic bowl with a little plastic plant and some gravel) and I was wondering if it is okay to replace the water in the bowl after cleaning the bowl with previously boiled water (now at room temperature) instead of dechlorinated water. My logic is that the heat would have killed any pollutants in the tap water and I'm only doing this because I've run out of dechlorination drops.

Any advice would be fantastic. Thank you!

 

[loraxchick]

it definitely would get rid of the chlorine, but heavy metals ,if you have any in your water, would still be present. i would say it's ok, as ive got municipal water and used to just leave it out to "age" for a day or two before water changes with no ill affect on my fish (same concept as boiling...to get rid or the chlorine). but now i always used pond dechlor for each w/c.
cheers

 

[Colin_T]

Howdee & Welcome

You should change about 1/3 to 1/2 of the water several times a week. You don't need to empty the bowl and wash everything out each week. Instead invest in or make a gravel cleaner and clean the gravel with that.

Boiling water doesn't affect the heavy metals/ pollutants in the water but it does drive out the gasses, (ie: carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen and chlorine). When the water has cooled down the gasses go back in, except the chlorine , which floats off into the atmosphere.
Boiling water and allowing it to cool is fine and will provide you with dechlorinated water. However, if you have chloramine in your water then it won't get rid of that and you will need a water conditioner that breaks down chloramine.
Chloramine is commonly used in the USA and some other countries, whereas Chlorine is common in the UK and most of the major Australian cities.

 

[three-fingers]

Welcome .

It depends on what your water company puts in the water.

Boiling will get rid of chlorine, but will not get rid of chloramine, and nowadays many water supplies gave this in them.
Adding boiled water that ha chloramine in it will be harmful to the betta, either short or long term depending on how much chloramine is in the water.

The safest way to do it is just take tap water and add a decent dechlorinator, if you have your betta in a small tank or bowl this really doesn't cost much, so buy a big bottle and it will last for years.

Btw, since your new to bettas, it's worthwhile mentioning that bowls aren't exactly ideal for keeping them in,and require a lot more maintenance then a small tank with a filter would.

It's also harder to keep the temperature right in them (especially at night).

If the temperature is too low, and the water has small amounts of ammonia in it constantly (which it often does with out water changes every 1-2 days), expect this to have a very negative long-term affect on the betta, and make it more susceptible to things like fin rot - while not appearing to immediately obviously affect the betta.

There are exceptions for people who are experienced with bettas and can keep on top of maintenance, often breeders who cannot house all the fry in tanks

But for the average betta keeper, bowls are a bad idea (forget what the pet store told you, they are trying to sell things).