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I had all five of my cories die over the period of 6 months. All of them succumbed to what I can only assume was Gas Bubble Disease.

My dad just informed me that at that time my town started adding some form of water treatment that actually added ammonia to the water as a side effect. Does this make sense to anyone? If so, what do I do to change water in my tank in order to keep my poor guys from dying while I'm away at college? I do water changes when I'm home, but now with this ammonia in the water I'm adding to the tank I wonder if I'm doing more harm than good.

Hi,
For years and years water treatment plants have been
adding chlorine to the water to kill off various forms
of bacteria. Now they have found that it does not kill
off everything (perhaps they have become resistant) and
are now adding Chloramine which is a mixture of chlorine
and ammonia.

Regular Dechlorinator will not remove Chloramine. Read the
bottle of your dechlorinator and be sure that it actually
states that it will nutralize Chlorine AND chloramine.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Frank is correct about the chemicals added to town water suplies.

Get your dad to contact your local water supply and ask exactly what they are adding to the water. Some water companies have a WWW site which gives you a list of all the chemicals added plus plenty more about your water.

Your local LFS should know what is being added to your supply.

Tell us exactly where you live and there could be members close to you who will have plenty of infomation about your water.

Sorry I cannot help in that way as I am in Aust


Have a look in [link=My Profile]http://
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Keith

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Easiest thing is to get a water conditioner that handles chloramine and chlorine like Frank mentioned. Aquarium pharm used to sell a great one but last time I checked online they werent selling it :%).
I've since switched to using seachems [link=Prime]http://www.bigalsonline.com/catalog/product.xml?product_id=28317;category_id=2229;pcid1=2207;pcid2=" style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link] which not only does chlorine and chloramine, but also does ammonia...you will get used to the "lovely" smell that is the joy of using prime .

^_^[hr width='40%'][/font]

I didn't find the smell all that bad provided you aren't sticking your nose over the bottle and trying to snort the stuff while adding it to the buckets. Once mixed in the bucket it was barely noticeable and in the tank it's not noticeable at all.