# Any DIY Water Conditioner?



## tanseattle (Jun 28, 2012)

Does anyone here make your own water conditioner?

If you read on the back of the water conditioners you often see sodium thiosulfate, sodium carbonate, EDTA, and polyvinylxxxx (for slime coat). Does anyone here do it yourself water conditioner?

The most important chemical is sodium thiosulfate (if you are poinsoned and come to ER most likely you will get sodium thiosulfate in the I.V. line). 

EDTA and Sodium Carbonate are used for removing hard chemical but these hard chemical are very small in tap water. You can skip these two chemicals.

Polyvinylxxxx thing is for slime coat if you fish fight and cut and it is very low dose.

So the only thing you really need is sodium thiosulfate. 

Does any making your own water conditioner? I have many tanks and it cost too much using comercial water conditioners.

For $6.5 you can get 500g of sodium thiosulfate that can last for 10 years or neutralize about 100,000 gal of tap water.


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## CallmeAustin (Jul 10, 2012)

DIY

Step 1 Go to store
Step 2 buy Water Conditoner

I wouldn't mess around with chemicals for any living animal.


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## tanseattle (Jun 28, 2012)

I teach chemistry in college and high school. Step #2 is very expensive when you have 20 tanks like I have.


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## ao (Feb 29, 2012)

I would say test it on a population of snails while animal rights have not yet gotten to snails. Especially since most snails like ramshorns pond snails and mts are prolific breeders and considered a pest. or... test on a few ghost shrimps, if they survive... almost anything will survive. but I support you to try it out and tell the rest of the forum community what the results are  i think the most important things are getting rid of chlorine and chlromine.


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## Twilight Storm (Apr 14, 2011)

Look into pond dechlorinators, and their websites if no one can answer you here. I know i've seen this talked about on some forum or website when I was doing other research. Some of the pond and plant sites talk about this.

Some of the gallon liquid pond dechlor jugs are under $20 though, and even with 20 tanks I would think a giant jug would last quite a long time depending on the concentration of the liquid, even if you are treating huge vats of water to age for water changes. (Just thought I would bring it up as an option just in case)

GL btw and welcome to the site


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## teeneythebetta (Apr 29, 2012)

aokashi said:


> I would say test it on a population of snails while animal rights have not yet gotten to snails. Especially since most snails like ramshorns pond snails and mts are prolific breeders and considered a pest. or... test on a few ghost shrimps, if they survive... almost anything will survive. but I support you to try it out and tell the rest of the forum community what the results are  i think the most important things are getting rid of chlorine and chlromine.


+1 Once I had something happen and I had to remove my snails. It was a stressful situation & i forgot to add conditioner and about an hour later I went to check on them and they were both in their shells and hadn't moved. I was like OMG WTF and quickly got them into conditioned water. Poor things. They're still alive though.


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## thekoimaiden (Oct 19, 2011)

I have a lot of tanks, too. I use Prime as it is very concentrated. You can buy it in bulk (2L bottles), and it is much more cost efficient that way. A lot of my aquarist friends have more tanks than I do and will use Prime in the largest bottles. I would find the prices of those chemicals first before I call it the DIY way less expensive.


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## Blue Fish (Jun 11, 2012)

I'm with Twilight Storm, I use API super concentrated water conditioner (for ponds) and it's something like 1ml per 20 gallons of water, and the bottle itself is a good 360ml or 480ml's. I think I paid $6 for the bottle at Petco, and I'm sure you could find it cheaper online somewhere. 

http://www.123ponds.com/dechlgal.html
The only thing with this one...do you want the alkilinity changed? I'm not sure about that one, but the rest of it sounds good.
http://www.petmountain.com/product/...oat-fish-tap-water-conditioner-for-ponds.html
1 gallon size treats over 15,000 gallons of water for 41.00 and has the stress coat with it

I hope that helps!


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## tanseattle (Jun 28, 2012)

thekoimaiden said:


> I have a lot of tanks, too. I use Prime as it is very concentrated. You can buy it in bulk (2L bottles), and it is much more cost efficient that way. A lot of my aquarist friends have more tanks than I do and will use Prime in the largest bottles. I would find the prices of those chemicals first before I call it the DIY way less expensive.


If you have Koi, koi farms use sodium thiosulfate. The price is $5.50 for 500g bottle that make 10 gal solution to treat 250,000 gal tap water.

1g/100ml water: 1 drop treat 1 gal (20 drops = ml; 100ml = 2000 drops; treat 2,000 gal of water). A bottle water conditioner cost $3 for 40 gal. 1g sodium thiosulfate = 50 bottles ($150 whereas 1g sodium thiosulfate cost 1.1 cent ($0.011).


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## Geomancer (Aug 23, 2010)

Yes, buying in bulk will be cheaper.

Just like buying bulk fertalizers is cheaper than buying the pre-mixed for aquatic plants.

The question just becomes, is the savings worth the work?

If your water is treated with chlorine, you could just let it sit for 24 hours and pay nothing, but keeping barrels of water around is not practicle 

I don't think you'll find many who DIY on this one. You can buy Prime up to a 20L bottle, which is enough for 200,000 gallons of water. You'll have to buy that online though, no pet store will likely sell that large of a bottle due to how much space it takes up (a little over 5 gallons).

There is nothing wrong with doing it yourself, it's just not practicle for most.


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## thekoimaiden (Oct 19, 2011)

tanseattle said:


> If you have Koi, koi farms use sodium thiosulfate. The price is $5.50 for 500g bottle that make 10 gal solution to treat 250,000 gal tap water.


I don't understand what my small koi pond (4000 gal) has to do with Koi farms most of which are multimillion gallon operations. They need to use the most concentrated stuff to save money (koi are already expensive enough :roll. Unless you are running an operation with thousands of gallons, I don't think you will save that much money in the long run. I'm with Geomancer. The money is worth the work I would save in the long run. But hey, it's your time and your money.


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## TheCrabbyTabby (Jul 7, 2012)

+1 on buying conditioner from the store. Making it might be more costly than anything and you might kill your fish in the process. Better safe than sorry.


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## mattoboy (Feb 4, 2012)

Just let your water sit for 24 hours before-hand.


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## TheCrabbyTabby (Jul 7, 2012)

Letting the water sit isn't effective enough. Heavy metals simply don't evaporate from the water.


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## MrVampire181 (May 12, 2009)

R/O water is pure, distilled water. $150 for a decent unit and takes awhile to fill a trash can but it removes EVERYTHING from your water. To the point where you need to add a few buffers, AQ/rock salt, IAL, and maybe some conditioner.


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## TheCrabbyTabby (Jul 7, 2012)

Isn't that distilled water a bit acidic for fish?


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## Aahnay (Jul 3, 2012)

Hmm, I just did a google for 'make your own dechlorinator' and found several answers. I just read the first one from 2003. They do use it and there was a recipe there =). One said to share it with your friends, because one drop makes one gallon of product. wetmanNY said that on Aquaria central.

He also linked another site with recipes in his post there. And another MP said, 'Actually, 1 drop of 10% (not 1%) Sodium thiosulfate solution per gallon of water will neutralize 1 ppm of chlorine'

So, its doable =)

(i hope i did the other site info correctly, no urls)


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