Can we chlorinate our tanks?

[Dom]

Is there a level of chlorine which we can add to our tanks that will be effective in keeping things such as algae at bay, but not harm corals and fish?

I guess what I am speaking of is dosing chlorine.

Thank you.

 

[Nick Steele]

I highly doubt it stuff is harsh. Will most definitely kill bacteria

 

[WVNed]

I think any level high enough to kill anything would burn a fishes gills and lead to a quick death.

 

[Dom]

Yes... that is my feeling; the minimum level to be effective will be harmful to fish.

And I hadn't considered the effect it would have on the nitrifying bacteria colony... good point.

 

[Tamberav]

There was a old thread on here of people doing bleach dosing…seems crazy to me but people did it. Seems it’s been a thing for years. You can easily search for it.

Peroxide is another.

 

[Bad Company]

As Dom mentioned above, the entire purpose of chlorine in water is to kill bacteria. Which will eliminate the nitrogen-cycle in your tank.

 

[Miami Reef]

Excellent discussion!

 

[Little c big D]

I was one of the bleachers. I hit something like 3ml 3x a day on a 90gal. To see if it worked against dinos.

A few memories from that experiment on my end. The tank smelled great. The skimmer worked harder than I've ever seen, and the dinos didn't like it... they receded some... but no long term effect. I also questioned if it could work on velvet. Which iirc is related to dinos.

I had a sailfin yellow, blue hippo tank. Clowns. Across, some LPS and zoas and BTA. I suffered no losses in live stock. My LFS can confirm.

I saw no real benefit of doing it, but it was worth the effort. Twillard nuked his tank I think

 

[DivingTheWorld]

If you're looking for a "cleaner" for keeping algae down in your tank, there are products on the market. Look into Vibrant by UWC.

 

[Dom]

There was a old thread on here of people doing bleach dosing…seems crazy to me but people did it. Seems it’s been a thing for years. You can easily search for it.

Peroxide is another.

Searches are nice, but sometimes the info in searches are missing important things, such as others experiences.

 

[Tamberav]

Searches are nice, but sometimes the info in searches are missing important things, such as others experiences.

What, that's literally what is in the searches... is literally their experiences. It's just a bunch discussions on various forums.

 

[Dom]

What, that's literally what is in the searches... is literally their experiences. It's just a bunch discussions on various forums.

I said "sometimes".

 

[taricha]

The problem with bleach in a tank is not that it persists - it will react quickly, it's that you can't predict what it will react with unless you already know exactly what it will meet.
If it hits a small amount of ammonia, then you are putting chloramine in your system - yikes. There are other chlorinated byproducts that are also semi-stable and not good stuff, chlorine combines with amino acids etc etc. In your local water quality report they give you all kinds of different compounds that are checked for and detected at various levels - many of which are byproducts formed when chlorine meets other things.
Ozone (or maybe even permanganate) is a far better fit for this kind of idea.
That's my skin-deep understanding of the issues.