Dosing Baking Soda

H

hardaur

Premium Member
Hey all. I use RS Coral Pro salt, and I'm having trouble with my Alk. I've read on RC that there Red Sea had a bad batch, but I can't find it again to save my life. Anyway, I want to try and get my Alk up a bit and thought I would try Baking Soda. Before I did, I thought I would touch base with you guys to see if you had any further comments.

I'm basing my dosing on Randy Holmes-Farley's advice at http://advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

That still considered good info, it's fairly old? Also, though I didn't notice him saying that it should be baked, but I've heard that elsewhere. Is there a reason to bake it first (standard arm&hammer). Can you guys point me to better info if such exists, or how to bake if necessary?

Thanks!

H

P.S. PH is a little low too, 7.9 or so (usually a solid 8.0 24x7). I know that there are issues with Ca balance, but I'm out of reagent for my Ca test, need to grab another. Also, this is a FOWLR, so no inverts outside of crabs/shrimp/snails.
 
@hardaur wrote:
Hey all. I use RS Coral Pro salt said:
Still good info... if you need to bump your pH up a bit, I would bake that baking soda before adding it. Baking Soda by itself, while it will bump your alk just fine, will also lower your pH slightly. If you bake it, it will raise it slightly.

Here is your homework reading... he mentions baking baking soda in this one. I didn't look if he gave temp and times, but I think its 425 for 20 mins.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/index.php
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the response. I'd found that one. The end result of the homework was 300 for 60 minutes (I did 75). The purpose behind the baking is to cook the CO2 out of it (from sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate, IIRC). CO2 lowers PH, so baking it out and increasing alk raises PH. . .both desirable to me. One should also pay attention to calcium, but as I mentioned, I'm out of reagent and just did a 20% WC last Sunday, and with my level of Ca consumption (next to 0), I'm pretty sure that's not a problem.

What I did was to prepare about a pound of the stuff and put it back. I have a 100g tank, so I heated up a glass of RO/DI and mixed in 1 level tsp of the baking soda and slowly(ish) added it to my sump. I'm going to do 1tsp a day in this manner and track the changes until I (hopefully) reach desirable results.

If any of this information is wrong, please correct me for others that might be following this later ; )

Thanks again!

H

P.S. You know, thinking about it, it almost seems like it was Marc that said something about the bad batch of red sea coral pro? Yup, in an article in reef keeping, his water change article if I remember right. Wonder how long ago that was?
 
@DaveJ wrote:
[I]@hardaur wrote:[/I][quote="Hey all. I use RS Coral Pro salt said:
Still good info... if you need to bump your pH up a bit, I would bake that baking soda before adding it. Baking Soda by itself, while it will bump your alk just fine, will also lower your pH slightly. If you bake it, it will raise it slightly.

Here is your homework reading... he mentions baking baking soda in this one. I didn't look if he gave temp and times, but I think its 425 for 20 mins.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/index.php"]

Be VERY careful when using baked baking soda to RAISE levels. Recipie 1 will raise ph much more than recipie 2 will lower ph. This is partialy due to the fact that more baked will dissolve in water than unbaked.

The localized spike in Ph can cause precipitation. It must be added V E R Y slowly. After going through such a problem myself I now use baked for dosing with my LMIII and for quick "fixes" I use the unbaked.

If your Ph is low and your alk is fine more than likely it's a problem with too much CO2. Try opening a window or adding a little bit of kalk to your top off water.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, I'm being very careful, definitely affects PH significantly. I'm dosing 1tsp a day and checking alk and ph just before lights on and lights off every day. So far it's looking good, but think I'm going to have to switch to unbaked (bicarbonate) soon as the PH seeing better results than Alk.

All in all, I'm VERY satisfied with the results of this.

Thanks for the info!

H
 
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