Question: What is the Difference Between Chlorine and Chloramine?

Answer: The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) is a federal law in the United States that was enacted in 1974 to ensure safe drinking water. As a result of this law, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was tasked with setting the drinking water quality standards for all public water systems across the country. These regulations require that all municipal water supplies be treated to limit bacterial growth and other hazardous contaminants.


However, water treatment companies may choose different disinfectant methods to achieve the required result. For a long time chlorine was the disinfectant of choice, but in recent years many municipal water treatment plants have switched to chloramines. For most people it doesn't make any difference, but to the aquarium owner the difference is very significant.

Chlorine
The concentration of chlorine required to successfully treat public water sources is high enough to be lethal to your fish. Fortunately it is easily neutralized by one of two methods. The first option is to chemically treat the water with sodium thiosulfate. Virtually every water treatment product available at your local pet shop contains this chemical. In other words, if your water contains only chlorine, all you need to purchase an inexpensive water treatment product to make your water safe for your fish.

The second chlorine removal method utilizes the fact that given the opportunity, chlorine dissipates quite rapidly into the atmosphere.

Expose water to the open air for twenty-four hours, and it will become chlorine free. This can be accomplished by leaving it in open buckets, or by filling the tank and letting the filter run at least one day before adding the fish. Many of us old-timers in the hobby remember treating our aquarium water in this way. It worked quite well, because at the time chloramines weren’t used in public water treatment.

Sounds fairly simple, doesn’t it? Not so fast. With the change by many municipal water plants to the use of chloramines, treating tap water for aquarium use has become a bit more complicated.

Chloramine
In recent years, water treatment plants have increasingly turned to chloramines as an alternative to chlorine. Chloramines are a combination of ammonia with chlorine. Unlike straight chlorine, which dissipates fairly quickly when exposed to air, chloramines remain in the water. That’s good for the company tasked with keeping public drinking water safe from contaminants such as bacteria. It’s not so good for those of us who keep fish and want to use our tap water to fill the aquarium.

First and foremost, it means the old trick of aging water in open buckets or in a tank with a filter running, won’t work anymore. You can age the water for days and the chloramines will still be there. Secondly, it means you must ensure that you treat the water for chloramines rather than for just chlorine. Not all aquarium water treatment products will neutralize the chloramines. Even those that advertize they do, aren’t always fully effective at the job, so choose your water treatment products carefully.

Often these products remove the chlorine portion and lock the ammonia portion, in the same fashion as Ammo-Lock. This will render the water safe for your fish, but keep in mind that your ammonia tests may not be accurate. If you wish to accurately monitor your ammonia levels, you will need to use a test kit that can separately measure NH3 (free ammonia) and NH4+ (ionized ammonia)

Which Do You Have?
The most direct way to determine what is in your tap water is to call your water company and ask them what they use to treat the municipal water supply. By law they must make the composition of your water available to you. Perhaps you aren't comfortable asking your water municipality. If so, you can always test your tap water yourself. Since it's wise to test your water anyway, testing is an good route to go. There are test kits available that test for chlorine as well as chloramines. Or, you simply test your tap water for ammonia. If it tests positive for ammonia, chloramines are almost certainly present. Then you can choose the proper product to treat your tap water.

Another option is to bypass all testing and simply treat the water with a product that neutralizes both chlorine and ammonia. That way you cover all the bases. Regardless of what you do, it's always wise to be aware of what is in your water source, and take the appropriate steps to ensure it’s safe for your aquarium and pond fish.