water conditioners vs ro

[spamreefnew]

Just for the record I DO use RO/DI water and always have and will.

But I was wondering just what water conditioners do and how they do it.
I used to use water conditioners for my fresh water and fish only tanks and never seemed to have an issue. I have been told in the past that they somehow "bind" things like chlorine and copper but after a long time that "bond"could be broken letting the toxins free again. just thought this would be fun to know

 

[spieszak]

Chlorine will dissipate on its own... I never saw any value at all of it in my FW tanks and stopped using it a couple weeks in to my 12 years of tanks.
Just saying.. no idea what they ACTUALLY do, I kind of always believed them to be snake oil

 

[jmchzn123]

The only conditioner I use is Amequel (sp?) for my filter socks cleaning when I don't have time to dry them fully. I bleach them for a few hours then rinse in tap then soak in Amequel for an hour or so. Other than that using the purest water I can is the way to go. A decent RO/DI unit will polish your water to 0 TDS. Funny tough times has hit my household and we stopped using poland springs bottled water. I started making water w the RO/DI unit and its absolutely best water I every tasted it was insane....we love it. Resin and filters are MUCH cheaper. .....I'm just saying!

 

[reefsforme]

Water conditioners mainly cover-up / mask any impurities in the water. Once placed in the aquarium, most of these impurities should be collected by the filter. So, it's better than tap water, but not as good to RO/DI water.

 

[chuckreef]

There are a number of water conditioners on the market. They contain a variety of chemical substances including reducing reagents to remove chloirine, chelating agents to bind metals and orgainccompunds, (e.g., aloe vera extract) to promote slime and sooth fish scales. Many of the "exotics" are not proven and may be snake oil. The sulfonates and thiosulfates do what they claim, as does the EDTA to some extent. There is no real use for these in the reef hobby, except as one poster noted for dechlorinating small volumes of tap water occasionally. Note the sulfonates (e.g., AmQuel) will react with chlorinated water to form formaldehyde, which is then broken down biologically in a freshwater aquarium. If the source tap water does not have chloramines, it might be better to use a thiosulfate based chlorine reducer as we don't know the full extent of the sensitivity of some inverts to formaldeyde.

 

[spamreefnew]

sounds almost useless then ,,,,glad I use ro only now