waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
You know, to tell the truth, I don't know. The fact that pH 7 to 8.4 as a range is good, is well established and supported by the cases we see here in the beginner forum. The 8.0 to 8.4 optimal is drawn from Tim Hovanec, whose published papers actually involved doing real science on these bacterial species... but whether one could detect 8 to 8.4 actually being faster than 7.4 or something is debatable. It might indeed be that if you had a lab full of controlled tanks you could pull it out of the statistics pretty easily but in the noise of everything else going on in a home situation its probably doubtful.
Going on the theory that there's nothing at all wrong with dumping bicarbonate in a fishless cycling tank where most of it will go out at the big water change, there should be nothing wrong with trying. In fact, when I did this very thing during my fishless cycle, I tried pretty hard here on TFF to find anyone who could tell me anything negative about using bicarb just during the fishless cycle and didn't come up with any negative comments.
But that's not to say there couldn't be something a little negative. In hindsight, I realize that the Na (sodium) part of Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) could be left behind, and salt is not something we want in freshwater tanks, even with mollies usually. Now, truth is, I don't know what would likely happen to the salt.
My mental picture is that you add the sodium bicarbonate... its soluble at room temp/pressure, so the Na and the HCO3-minus dissassociate and the bicarbonate anion goes on to be available to associate with various protons (H+) that are in abundance from both steps of the nitrification process (thus playing its buffering role.) Then you've got some Na+ ions (the sodium) floating around and I don't know whether it would tend to stick with the substrate (this could vary highly with the type of substrate of course) or would mostly go out with the big water change at the end of fishless cycling! (hey, maybe OM47 will come along with an opinion!)
Sorry to go all sciency on you. The short answer is that your pH is probably fine just as is but since you were talking about playing around it got me going...
~~waterdrop~~
Going on the theory that there's nothing at all wrong with dumping bicarbonate in a fishless cycling tank where most of it will go out at the big water change, there should be nothing wrong with trying. In fact, when I did this very thing during my fishless cycle, I tried pretty hard here on TFF to find anyone who could tell me anything negative about using bicarb just during the fishless cycle and didn't come up with any negative comments.
But that's not to say there couldn't be something a little negative. In hindsight, I realize that the Na (sodium) part of Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) could be left behind, and salt is not something we want in freshwater tanks, even with mollies usually. Now, truth is, I don't know what would likely happen to the salt.
My mental picture is that you add the sodium bicarbonate... its soluble at room temp/pressure, so the Na and the HCO3-minus dissassociate and the bicarbonate anion goes on to be available to associate with various protons (H+) that are in abundance from both steps of the nitrification process (thus playing its buffering role.) Then you've got some Na+ ions (the sodium) floating around and I don't know whether it would tend to stick with the substrate (this could vary highly with the type of substrate of course) or would mostly go out with the big water change at the end of fishless cycling! (hey, maybe OM47 will come along with an opinion!)
Sorry to go all sciency on you. The short answer is that your pH is probably fine just as is but since you were talking about playing around it got me going...
~~waterdrop~~
Those are the moments that keep me coming back, when I get to hear something like "Bloomin Eck"... UKers are more fun!
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