Baking soda safe for all tropical fish?

[njparton]

I've just purchased an RO unit and the product water has a pH of <5. My tap water is 7 and the water in my tank 6-6.5.

I've visited all my local fish stores and couldn't find any purpose made RO buffer additive on sale, so I bough some trace mineral additive thinking it would do the trick (Seachem Trace to be exact).

I aerated the water for 24 hours and brought it up to 25C, but the pH didn't change. I added some of the trace mineral additive to the recommended dosage, but that had little (maybe a +0.5 pH) effect.

I added the 5.5-6 pH RO water to my tank anyway as it represented only 15% of the volume, but I don't want to do this week in week out for obvious reasons.

I'm therefore thinking of using (readily available) baking soda to help bring the pH of the RO water up to 6.5 - is it safe for all types of tropical fish? Would it add anything back to the water that would make an RO unit worthless?

Maybe I should also consider some broken coral in the tank to help stabilise the pH?

 

[mrV]

Bakind soda contains NaHCO3, that dissolves in water to Na+ + HCO3- etc... So, it's not harmfull.

But because you use RO-water, do you have enough other salts in water? Mg, Ca...? And you also should use conductivity meter that you can adjust conductivity right. If you just add chemicals to water, there could be to much ions and conductivity is very high.

 

[Silly me]

IF "My tap water is 7 and the water in my tank 6-6.5"
why do you what a RO system for then???
you'll just need to add all the minerals you just removed to get the PH back to 6.5/7

My water is 8.5, and lowers to 6.8 with a CO2 system and peat in all my filters, sound like we need to swap water here?? lol

but a little bakingsoda will be fine

 

[njparton]

Bakind soda contains NaHCO3, that dissolves in water to Na+ + HCO3- etc... So, it's not harmfull.

But because you use RO-water, do you have enough other salts in water? Mg, Ca...? And you also should use conductivity meter that you can adjust conductivity right. If you just add chemicals to water, there could be to much ions and conductivity is very high.

The Seachem additive contains Mg, Ca etc which is why I bought it. I even over dosed it, but the pH didn't rise.

I think I'll try baking soda to see if that works...

How much in 35L do you think - a teaspoon (5ml)?

 

[njparton]

IF "My tap water is 7 and the water in my tank 6-6.5"
why do you what a RO system for then???
you'll just need to add all the minerals you just removed to get the PH back to 6.5/7

The purpose of an RO system is to remove contaminants from the water, not to change pH. The fact that my tap water is pH 7 is good, but it also contains >5 mg/l phosphates, for example.

"Just adding minerals" back didn't seem to help all that much.

Going to "invest" in some baking soda on the way home....

 

[Erika_4404]

Buy some Coral sand this will rise your ph up to levels you need it to be.