I have no idea what Prime is. Does it remove chlorine or salts? If the fish and fish plants are fine with it, I'm sure it would be fine for your house plants.

Fish water is the great to water with when you can.

Jane

It removes chlorine and chloramine. As well as nitrate nitrate and ammonia as well as provides a slime coat.

I'm just worried that it will get caught in the soil or something and build up salts or something like that...

It is probably fine. I had large aquariums but my tap water was well water so I didn't need to treat it. I did have a problem with nitrites which affected the tanks but not the plants.

Does it say anything on the label? I'm wondering if it would block the nitrate in fertilizer? The plants need nitrate.

I think you can buy a conditioner designed to remove chlorine without fooling around with removing nitrates.

You could also leave your tap water sit for a few days which gets rid of the chlorine without treating at all. As long as your tap water doesn't contain salt from a water softener, it should be fine.

I just don't know. Maybe send an email to the Prime website and see if they can answer it.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

Jane

Good point about the nitrates.Hmmm...I guess Iwon't use it just to be on the safe side.

Plus, only my Spiders and my Peace lily seem to mind tap water. But I guess I can always store excess fish tank water.. Thanks for the help

Check the info about leaving water to sit for few days in order to get rid of chlorine - I believe that it doesn't work in many cases - sorry, can't explain it well (it has to do with how/what is used to treat the water) but info is available. Al posted that info somewhere, I can't find the link right now.

Prime will not remove enough of a significant amount of ninitrate to make a difference if you have fish in your tank. That's the reason for water changes.

Nitrate is the final step for Ammonia in the denitrifying process. One type of bacteria takes the fish waste (ammonia and urea) and turns it into nitrite at which point you can add a bit of salt to your water (unless you use zeolite) to help protect the fish from nitrite toxicity which is blood poisoning, they cannot take up oxygen through their gills and ultimately suffocate. It's called brown-gill.

Nitrate is finally made from the nitrite by another colony of a different type of bacteria in the bio-media. Nitrate is much less toxic than ammonia and nitrite, but BASICALLY they all represent N on the NPK.

Chloramine is chlorine and ammonia bonded together because it is a more stable chemical and thus is more logical to use for water sanitation purposes. Once that ammonia is released, it can poison your fish so it needs to be neutralized. Nitrite as nitrate are just the bystander casualties.

I believe that sodium is one of the ingredients in Prime and maybe it works in a similar way as a home water softener?

I never though about it before but I used to use treated fish tank water.

eager to hear other's input. Are there any chemists here?

Edited to add: Mr.Blubs,

if you do store the water, be sure to keep an air stone or something going. It can become anaerobic and toxic (spoiled) if left sitting stagnant.

I have been using Jungle brand Start Right to dechlorinate my water for my plants for over a month now and No adverse effects... I think it is safe for your plants, mine are thriving.

I actually just called Seachem to ask and the official response is that they can't make the actual claim since they haven't done specific research on Prime as it relates to houseplants, but....

That it should be absolutely fine and dechlorinate the water with no adverse affects to the plants.

Aka, it should be absolutely fine, but they can't make the official claim since the data hasn't been collected through specific study.

How much would you put in a litre or gallon of tap water?

Adding a chemical to water doesn't just suddenly make minerals in the water disappear. There's a chemical reaction, and there are by-product chemical residues left in the water. You need to know what those residues are and their effects. That sort of information should be on the packaging along with dosage recommendations. If there's none of that I'd be extremely wary.