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Baking Soda

onefish2fish

onefish2fish

i know you can dose alk with baking soda, has anyone/does anyone do this. pros/cons? any good sites to read up on it?

is it as simple as mixing X amount of baking soda with X amount of RO water?
 
C

calaxa

Sodium Bicarbonate is the main ingredient in commercial buffer solutions and powders. I used to use it to raise alk/ph but now my alk is getting on the high side. You can also dry out the baking soda to convert to washing soda (sodium carbonate) by heating 1 hour at 300 degrees. If you do that, this becomes much stronger and is actually caustic to the touch (ph around 11.5 and will get warm when added to water whereas baking soda is about ph 8.1). It is as simple as mixing with RO or can actually be added direct to tank in small quantities. I'll try to find the article from RC which gives details but if you search, it's under their 3 part (calcium, alk, magnesium) guide.

What calcium part are you adding? If it's Calcium chloride based, then I can see why you need the alk part. If it's Calcium hydroxide based, I would wonder why the alk is not rising in proportion to the calcium.
 
blange3

blange3

calaxa said:
Yep that's the article.....for some reason I thought it was from RC. Thanks ric.
Click to expand...

You can find it, and a lot of other good stuff, in the RC Reef Chemistry Forum here. Follow the archive link.

I use the washing soda recipe as my ph runs low.
 
C

calaxa

blange...thanks...i must've gone to that link via RC. I know my memory isn't as good anymore but didn't think it was that bad.
 
V

vangvace

4 parts baking soda to 1 part baked baking soda mixes to a pH of ~8.2 btw in case you would be looking to avoid a pH swing.
 
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