janger

Not sure about the bacteria thing. Some products designed to cycle a tank faster than usual do contain bacteria. But that has nothing really to do with removing chloramine. Anyway, I found out there are several chemicals used. Along with the thiosulphate, some products contain aliphatic amine salts, though I have no idea how they bind up ammonia. I'm guessing they're similar to the quaternary ammonium salts used in waterbed conditioners and such. If they are responsible for binding up the ammonia, can anyone explain how it works? Other chemicals apparently used are hydroxymethanesulfonic acid, and various hydrosulfite salts

Many of the aquarium water treatment products use sodium thiosulfate to remove harmful chlorine/chloramine. But some products also bind the ammonia that splits from chloramine into a harmless compound, which is still available to plants and bacteria. Does anyone know what the chemical is that does this?

Yes, NaNo3 will work although not as good as the potassium salt. The reason it's not as good is sodium nitrate is more hygroscopic.

I found the answer http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/icespikes/icespikes.htm

I'm new here so I hope I posted this to the correct forum. My brother put some iceblock trays in the freezer one night. The next day he was surprised to find this in the tray. How does this occur? The front "stalagmite" contains bubbles, and we were thinking that has something to do with the formation. But I would really like to know the definite reason as to why this happened. Thanks, Dave

I have done this a couple of times, just for fun. The first time I used crushed eggshell soaked in cleaning vinegar for a couple of weeks, filtered the solution and evaporated it to get the calcium acetate solution. Then I added that to ethanol until it gelled. I think the proportions Invader_Gir posted are correct. I just added enough to the alcohol until it turned into a gel. The second time I reacted pure calcium carbonate with the vinegar to make the acetate. Both times it worked well. And it burnt just as good as the commercial product. Although the eggshell method gave off a bit different smell due to impurities.