steve wrote:There's a lot of dust with carbon, so when you put in a fresh bag you need to rinse it off first. As long as I've used carbon, they are all like that. I can rinse carbon the quickest under strong water flow, like from bathtub faucet.
When you use carbon, there is no need for Repti-safe or dechlorinators or conditioners... as you said the chlorine and chloramines are removed by carbon. Repti-safe and other water conditioners are not recommended as they have harmful chemicals in them.
Purigen doesn't really help with chlorine and chloramines, but will get other impurities. It's great that you can regenerate it for repeated use but it does not replace carbon.
VeipaCray wrote:Same with ReptiSafe. It's definitely not "safe"
Here's the psuedo MSDS sheet for ReptiSafe
http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/cg ... d=26004003
Unfortunately the companies that produce these products are not required to disclose all of the information about them. Using phrases like "propietary chemical or substance" get's them from disclosing what's actually in the product.
Fortunately, there are a few very honest companies like API that do a full disclosure of their chemicals and a proper MSDS sheet. Sodium Theosulfate is the common universal chemical in aquarium water conditioners.
API water conditioner
Here's a few highlights...
SODIUM THIOSULFATE: ■ Very toxic to aquatic organisms.
■ Sulfide ion is very toxic to aquatic life, threshold concentration for fresh or saltwater fish is 0.5ppm. The product therefore is very toxic to aquatic life.
Harmful to aquatic organisms. May cause long term adverse effects in the aquatic environment.
steve wrote:So when you rinse a dirty/used bag of carbon, the water appears dark? If that's the case, it's just some physical waste that it has collected.
I don't know the exact amount you should use, and the different brands might call for different amounts. The box should come with instructions, but I just put in a medium bag and that's it.... it's roughly 2/3 of a cup.
thrynkat wrote: Anyway, as for the water conditioner, is there anything that *is* considered safe to use if I don't have a way to filter the water before adding it to the tank?
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