Baking Soda

[Ob1]

I need to raised my kH from 3.36 to 7-8dH

I do have some baking soda at home but after reading the ingrediets I noted it contains selfraising flour and various other things - is this safe?

This may sound stupid but can I use baking soda purcheased from a supermarket? or is it better to buy a product to raise the kH? if yes any recommandations




cheers

ob1

 

[gale]

Are you sure it's baking soda or is it baking powder?? Baking soda should be pure, baking powder is made of baking soda plus other things. You don't want to put baking powder in your tank.

 

[opiesilver]

Another question you need to find out is what is your PH right now and what are you trying to get it too? If you are just trying to raise your hardness and don't really care about the PH then you could put a bag of crushed coral or oyster shells in you filter. That would raise you calcium carbonates level which is what baking soda will do for you.

Are you keeping plants that naturally decalcify the water?

 

[opiesilver]

I just read you other post. What fish are you keeping?

You ought to consider going to a ph controller at some point.

 

[Ob1]

Hi all

gale you are correct in your assumption, I was actually referring to baking powered. I did test the baking powered in a glass of water to see what would happen and it turned very cloudy

opiesilver my Ph has always shifted from a low 7.4 to high 7.8. But in the last 72 hours I had added a Co2 and an external reactor – since then the ph dropped to 7.2 and raised back to 7.6 over 24hours.

I want to increase the co2 to 15-20mg/l for my plants I had assumed my dH was 6 so a ph drop to 7 would provide the correct amount of co2. My test kit only measures Kh in mg/l (ppm) and didn’t convert the result to dH. My kH reading in mg/l was 60. I assumed this was straight conversion to 6dh. Sadly this is not the case; smithrc explained the conversion factor 0.056 so my actual Kh was actually 3.36. To complicate things even more I had the co2 system running on a timer – so not only was my water susceptible to shifts in Ph – but also by switching the co2 off at night was shifting the Ph.

I also noted that most of plants recommend a dH of 5 and above. This may have explained why I have been not getting great results with live plants. The reason I want to increase the kh is too stabilise the ph and increase the co2. I do intend to remove the timer and I do not intend to switch on an air stone during the night unless I see breathing problems first thing in the morning. I change large amount of water approx 26gallons every 2weeks so it seems a better idea to treat this water of a period of months until the tank reaches a dh of 6 or higher.

At present I have the following

1 Angel
2 large common pleco
10-bloodfin tetra
3 audio rainbows
12 rainbow fry (4 months old)
3 clowns

Are you keeping plants that naturally decalcify the water? – not sure what this means however I did see drop in my Kh reading – however I will need to take a second reading.

Appreciate everyone’s help – I wish I had better understood my own kh reading before adding the co2 L it would have saved a lot of worries


Ob1

 

[opiesilver]

I should have asked this before but what plants are you keeping? There are a few common plants like Bacopa carolina or Hygrophila polysperma that will use the carbonates in the water to build more plant tissue. When you add good light and a little extra CO2 you will see a drop in your DH and KH because the plants are using it up.

To combat this, short term, add a little baking soda to the tank. To combat the problem, in long term thinking, add a little porous baggy of crushed shells to your filter. The water will slowly dissolve the shells and raise you KH and DH levels. Problem is that right now you have really good water for the species of fish you are keeping. They will adjust to harder water but make the change slowly with the crushed shells instead of the baking soda. With the baking soda you will see and immediate change and your fish will notice it too and become stressed.

You really should use a PH controller on a pressurized CO2 system. You will see much smaller PH swings with it no matter how low your DH is.

The other issue you will face is that you are going to need to fertilize more often when you use CO2.