Python owners, how to dechlorinate?

My water, which contains chloramines, tests about 1 ppm ammonia. If I do a 50% water change, my tank will show about .5 ppm ammonia after a change. If I did a 20% change, I'd have about .2 ppm ammonia, but I'm not sure most hobby tests are sufficiently sensitive to reliably measure that little. Also, if you have a healthy biofilter, that ammonia will soon be taken up. Some people don't like exposing their fish to ANY ammonia unnecessarily and they use something that not only breaks the chlorine-ammonia bond, but also detoxes the ammonia. StressCoat does the former, but not the latter. (So does my bottle of generic sodium thiosulphate, which costs a fraction of what StressCoat does, and doesn't coat my fishes' gills and other sensitive tissues with "soothing" aloe.)

On my tanks at work, I regularly do 80% changes; I think using something like Amquel is cheap insurance against long term effects of regularly exposing my fish to low levels of ammonia.

If your water has only chlorine, but not chloramines, then a simple dechlorinator like StressCoat is sufficient.

HTH,
Jim
 
I would think that adding something to sooth a fish's body after losing slime coat would be counter productive, wouldn't it?

When Ich rears its ugly head everyone says to add salt to the water. Why does this help? Is salt posionous to Ich?

No, from what I've read. Salt irritates the fish and causes it to produce a thicker layer of slime coat to help repel the Ich.

So wouldn't adding a soothing agent do the opposite?

I would think it would cause the fish to produce a thinner than before layer of slime and put it at risk of easier disease susceptibility at a stressful time for them.
 
If anyone thought stress coat would produce more of a coating in the long run, it would be recommended as a treatment for ich. I don't think the two ideas are related. It's interesting that the salt works homeopathically. That doesn't mean other reasons for using a soothing agent don't exist. I wouldn't purposely make my skin drier so it would produce more oil. I'd add some lotion. Of course, I'd also look for the underlying cause, but in the moment, treating the symptom sometimes makes sense. And I know the cause of the stress: the necessary water change. A temporary aid for the fish to overcome that stress is unlikely to prevent its development of its own slime coat in the long run. (I do not own stock in the company. LOL I'm just a satisfied customer interested in the objections in case any of them seem to make sense.)
 
If anyone thought adding stress coat would cause a fish to not produce it's normal thickness of slime coat they "should not" offer it as a product to help recover or make up for that loss.

Only to make the fish feel better, not to help it. Seems like it would actually be detrimental.
 
Making the fish "feel better" is a way to reduce stress, which is the purpose of the product.
 
Reduce stress, maybe. But a side affect would be a thinner layer of slime coating which would make the fish more susceptible to invasion by parasites such as Ich I would think.

And therefore counter-productive since it would only alleviate one factor of stress on the fish, not the stress factor of a new home, a new owner, new cohabitants, new feeding habits and methods, etc.

I'm not sure on this but it does open a new line of thinking.
 
You said that, but I said it doesn't make any more sense than the idea that putting lotion on my hands keeps my natural oils from developing (which I already said). It might if I did it excessively, but once in a while will not. I use stress coat when I change water or move fish and have never had ich in any of my tanks. Reducing stress is THE POINT. All those things you list are causing stress, which reduces the slime coat. While it's healing, the aloe is meant to help lessen the stress of it all. It's stress that causes disease. (I found the idea that salt works homeopathically interesting. The rest of what you keep repeating is just conjecture and I GET IT. If someone has anything new to add, I would be interested. .)
 
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The point is that the minute reduction in stress achieved by adding a possibly inhibiting slime producing agent is more than offset by the possible invasion of parasites that the aloe may offer assistence to.

The reason why I repeated it, is because you seem to not be able to acknowledge what I am saying. You made no attempt to offer a reason that my musings were groundless.
 
Too Funny!!!

:D
I just logged on to pose this same exact question to the forum:

Python owners, how to dechlorinate?

Well, I got that answer and a good bit more. :rolleyes: Nice work all!!!
 
I think the contention that StressCoat reduces stress, aids the slime coat, soothes fish or has any other beneficial effect (besides dechlorination) has to be treated as conjecture. I've yet to see anything beyond manufacturers claims that there are beneficial effects from using aloe in aquaria.

Jim
 
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