Water Change And Dechlorination, Question.

[Whitester]

Sorry if this has been posted before, I searched for 15mins before asking.
When I do the water change, do I add the dechlorination chem to the new water BEFORE I add the new water to the tank? You follow me? The reason I ask, I only have a container big enough to hold 2 gallons / 7.5 liters. I have a 40 gallon / 151.4 liter tank. So I would want to change 10-20% right? So if I had to add the dechlorination to the new water first, I would only beable add to the max of my 2 gal / 7.5L per bucket. The alternative would be to add the dechlorination chem to the fish tank after I add the new water.

I am asking in prep of my upcoming ammonia levels rising. I made the mistake of adding fish (8 danios) only 10 hours after the tank has been running. I did however go out and purchase the liquid complete testing kit. So I am monitoring every day. Both ammonia and nitrIte are 0.0 now. But I have fed the fish flakes, a few times now. Tank has been running, for 36 - 40 hours, with fish for all but 10 hrs.

Thanks for any help!

 

[drobbyb]

Sorry if this has been posted before, I searched for 15mins before asking.
When I do the water change, do I add the dechlorination chem to the new water BEFORE I add the new water to the tank? You follow me? The reason I ask, I only have a container big enough to hold 2 gallons / 7.5 liters. I have a 40 gallon / 151.4 liter tank. So I would want to change 10-20% right? So if I had to add the dechlorination to the new water first, I would only beable add to the max of my 2 gal / 7.5L per bucket. The alternative would be to add the dechlorination chem to the fish tank after I add the new water.

I am asking in prep of my upcoming ammonia levels rising. I made the mistake of adding fish (8 danios) only 10 hours after the tank has been running. I did however go out and purchase the liquid complete testing kit. So I am monitoring every day. Both ammonia and nitrIte are 0.0 now. But I have fed the fish flakes, a few times now. Tank has been running, for 36 - 40 hours, with fish for all but 10 hrs.

Thanks for any help!

Just add it to the tank before you refill it. I add enough to treat the volume of the tank.

 

[Amunet]

You can add the dechlor straight in to the tank before adding the new water. As drobby said, put enough in to treat the entire tank.
Or you can put it in to the bucket or whatever that the new water is in. Either or is fine

 

[Whitester]

Thanks for the info! Much appreciated. That makes it very easy to do, adding to the tank first. I was afraid I was going to have to measure each 2 gallon bucket I had to change. That would have made for a long water change if I had to treat each bucket first.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi whitester and welcome to the beginner section!

So do you understand the goals for your fish-in cycle? You have to be a bit of a detective and try to figure out what combination of percentage and frequency of water changes will keep ammonia and nitrite(NO2) from rising above 0.25ppm (this is the limit for both of them) before you can next get back to the house, test, and potentially perform another water change. Most people figure out times that are about 12 hours apart such that they are at home on both ends of that.

It generaly takes at least of month of that but once you find that you can go two days without water changes and still see zero ppm ammonia and zero ppm nitrite(NO2) then you know you are proababy cycled and you should just then do your tests frequently for the next week to see if you've been fooled and if not then you can gradually lower your test frequency.

~~waterdrop~~