It might help to think about this in terms of decimals. Let $a,b\in\Bbb{Q},$ and write $a = \sum_{i\ll\infty}a_i 10^i$ and $b = \sum_{i\ll\infty}b_i 10^i,$ where $0\leq a_i,b_i\leq 9$ are digits. That is, $a$ has decimal expansion $a_n a_{n-1}\cdots a_1 a_0.a_{-1}a_{-2}\dots,$ and similarly for $b$. Then $a$ and $b$ live in the same equivalence class if and only if when you subtract them, their decimal parts cancel out. Another way to think about this is that $a$ and $b$ are in the same equivalence class if and only if their decimal parts agree after the decimal point; i.e., if and only if $a_i = b_i$ for all $i < 0.$ (Actually, this isn't quite true -- you need to make sure that you avoid the issue of $0.\overline{9}= 1,$ but you can decide to avoid decimal representations ending in repeating $9$'s and only use the representations ending in repeating $0$'s.)
So, each equivalence class in this group has a unique representative of the form $0.a_{-1}a_{-2}\dots < 1$ such that this decimal is a rational number. Another way to phrase this is that each equivalence class has a unique representative $\alpha\in\Bbb{Q}\cap [0,1)$.