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I went to a LFS this weekend and they had a big sign posted by their livestock...

"AQUASAFE kills!!! Ask associate for proper way to declorinate water"

I didn't ask anyone about the sign because I've used AquaSafe for years.

Has anyone else heard of this claim?

-Josh

Nope, I sure haven't and that's all I use. I use it on all my tanks including my 55 with 'sensitive' rams, angels, and tetras. Be interesting to find out what's behind this claim.

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

I might have to go back their and have been support their claim. Maybe I misread the sign but I'm certain it said the above statement. I looked at it a second time because my friend pointed it out and said, "isn't that what you use?"

-Josh

Naw, it isn't a killer. I haven't heard anything about a bad batch going around, so either the store is mistaken or they're trying to sell something else. Aquasafe doesn't treat as much water per bottle as Prime or Stress Coat and I don't care for Tetra, so I don't recommend it to many people. Nothing wrong with the product though, it works just fine.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Yes, please do go back and get the 411.

Never had any problems with it in the nearly 12 years I've been using it in the Panda Fun Palace... what have these people been smoking?

The only time I've had issues is with Panda fry, but they're notoriously delicate to start with. You have to calculate the dose much more stringently with Panda fry than with adult Pandas during the first 21 days of life, which is the critical period for these fry. But then they need water changes to be conducted very carefully during the 21 day critical period full stop.

Most other fishes I've encountered are perfectly happy with my using AquaSafe.

One possibility that arises here is that the water company pumped excess treatment chemicals down the pipeline on the day these people did their water change. If excess aluminium sulphate finds its way into the water supply and thence into your aquarium, it's a slate wiper. No amount of AquaSafe can save your fishes from that.

UPDATE : this thread started by Tiny_Clanger is illustrative of the point. Tiny_Clanger accidentally overdosed an aquarium with it, but has reported no losses, only that the water has remained blue. If AquaSafe was as dangerous as these people claim on that sign, then Tiny_Clanger would be reoprting a complete wipeout by now.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Neither of those tanks were fishtanks though!

One is shrimp, one is a frog


Stresscoat can be lethal to Bettas, though. I have definitely seen Stresscoat contributing to Columnaris infections.

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

But shrimps are even more sensitive to adverse water conditions than many fishes TC ... which just goes to reinforce my point further

You've seen a correlation between Strees Coat and Columnaris? Is this using the stated dose? Hmm, strange ...

Meanwhile, here's a detailed account of Columnaris infections in fishes along with treatment recommendations that I'll try and post up in the Hospital Forum sometime.

That suggests to me, TC, that they're using untreated water in the manufacturing process ... which if true, is a piece of cost cutting that is tantamount to criminal negligence ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I don't think so, my experiences were that Columnaris, especially SaddleBack Columnaris are endemic in farmed betta populations.

All I have noticed is that stresscoat appears to irritate the skin of Bettas, giving the infection an "easy" route to take hold.

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

Just to stir the pot... I did a 20% water change to my 20G with tiger barbs, and because I age my water but didn't that time, FORGOT to add clorine remover. The fish didn't die.

I knew a guy at my old job who was a fish nut. Built really fancy tanks with huge filters, and eventually plumbed his tanks for automatic water changes. He has it flowing so the water changes are always in progress. He knows all about clorine but cares not about it.

(/flame suit)

Most big corporate pet stores have auto top offs on their tanks hooked directly to the tap and suffer minimal loses because of it. In all actuality most municipal water supplies keep chlorine concentration at about only 2-4ppm this amount dilluted in a large amount of water normally has little affect on most species normally sold at stores.



And a quick google search yielded this answer to the whole question raised in this thread:
http://badmanstropicalfish.com/forum/index.php?topic=494.msg3384

I also found this thread in the Killies.com forums in which an aquarist experienced something interesting when using Amquel ... having previously used AquaSafe with no unwelcome effects ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Ive also used aquasafe for years, with dozens of species of fish, and with the several hundred fish I have now, and I definately couldnt say that it has contributed to the death of a single fish. In fact id say it was one of the more complete and fast acting water conditioners, despite perhaps not being the most economical.

One thought though, it does seem logical to me that such a product might be vulnerable to having cheap copies made by black marketers , and as such , there might be bottles of "fake" aquasafe out there. Ive come across unexplainably cheap bottles in certain shops, and i kinda wonder why they may be so cheap, and stay away from them.

The other factor is that lots of people throw water conditioner directly into the tank and then pour the tapwater straight in, and well, surely this can only lead to fish being exposed to clorinated water for several minutes, as well as the chemical reaction from the aquasafe, and perhaps this is not altogether healthy for the fish. I always put the tapwater and aquasafe in buckets before it goes into the tankwater so that it has a chance to mix and do its thing first.

Well, I'm not sure about that either. I've been using my Python on both my 55 and my 29 for a couple of months now and I throw in enough Aquasafe to treat the whole tank and fill with the Python. I've had fish (even angels, rams and rummynose tetras) swim directly through the stream of Aquasafe with no ill effects (happened just last night). I do try to keep them away from the incoming water, though.

I think maybe this Aquasafe thing might be starting to become an urban legend. It would have been easy enough to blame Aquasafe for my mysterious die-off in my 55 a couple of months ago had I not previously used this product with no problem. Just think if a rumor gets started how hard it is to stop. I'm dropping this one into 'myth' category.

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

Well, that urban legend is acquiring some interesting nuances in some circles - that link Stuff_Gnome provided is an example. The irony being that some ill-informed people are claiming that AquaSafe is reacting chemically under heat to produce formaldehyde, while some other products that aren't attracting the same alarms such as Amquel actually contain some formaldehyde as part of their composition (see my killies.com forum link).

Mind you, the formadehyde issue was effectively debunked in Stuff_Gnome's link - as a chemist psoting there said, in order for any reagents to produce formaldehyde, you have to pass them over a heated catalyst - the reactants have to be at 250 degrees celsius, and the catalyst has to be at a whopping 550 degrees celsius for the reaction to work. As vatious people on the badnamstropicalfish forums said, either the AquaSafe had to be shipped to the shops on a route that included the surface of Venus, or the conditions inside the aquarium would have to be such that your fishes would be charred barbecue steaks long before the formaldehyde was formed ...

My view is that the LFS in question conducted water changes with tap water that had been overdosed with treatment chemicals such as aluminium sulphate from the water company, which happened to me in October 2005. No amount of conventional water conditioner is going to save your aquarium from a serious wipeout if excess aluminium sulphate gets into your aquarium. Here in the UK we had a water pollution incident at a town called Camelford, where a large quantity of water treatment chemicals were accidentally (or negligently, depending upon your viewpoint in the resulting lawsuit) emptied into a nearby river. The quantity was such that it not only wiped out thousands of fishes and other aquatic organisms, but caused some nasty health issues among the people drinking the water. Here is a link from the BBC about the tenth anniversary of the incident.

Admittedly this was an extreme case, but even a small excess of aluminium sulphate reaching your taps is going to be a killer amongst your fishes, not only because the chemical itself is intrinsically toxic to aquatic life, but because it causes dangerous metal ions (lead and copper) to be stripped from plumbing sytems and enter solution. If my Octoner 2005 incident had been due to faulty water conditioner, then the incident would have repeated itself in subsequent water changes with additional fish attrition, whereas it was a one-off. A sudden large scale die-off sounds to me like an incident akin to mine, which was replicated by pond owners in my locality who performed water changes on the day in question. Those pond owners didn't all use AquaSafe - some used the King British brand of water conditioner, some used Waterlife's Haloex, and others used AquaSafe. All experienced the same fish losses.

Sadly, this urban legend looks likely to persist despite the fact that it is, like so many of its kind, most likely based upon uninformed conjecture instead of fact.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Re the levels of chlorine in tap water not being high enough to kill fish, it was always my understanding that the levels of chlorine in tap water was indeed not high enough to kill the fish directly.

However the levels were high enough to damage the bacterial colonies within the tank therefore creating a mini or even complete cycle which could be damaging to the fish.

I believe the chlorine burns the fish and will cause serious harm that could lead to death by secondary infection.



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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions