Aquarium water conditioner question

[janger]

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?

[Hephaestus]

many water agers do contain large amounts of bacteria which convert the ammonia into nitrite/nitrate. Not sure what else could do it. EDTA would not.

[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