[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Muriatic Acid



Richard & Carol Dippold wrote:
> 
>     I have seen muriatic acid used to lower pH of water.
> Sold in LFS it was a lot more expensive than the muriatic acid in
> the hardware store. If I get the hardware store brand do I have to do
> anything to it before use? What are the disadvantage of using it over
> other pH lowering chemicals?

As George says, HCl is extremely corrosive and very dangerous to use around
water.

Why do you want to tinker with pH, anyway? It's *much* less important than
the stores claim.

The fish can't feel/taste it. Honest!

If you don't change water enough, and don't have good enough plant growth,
the fish-waste ammonium *can* turn to toxic ammonia at higher pH, burning
your fish's gills and skin. Do your water changes faithfully, and that is
simply no problem.

> 
>   Jungle makes a pH stabilizer or buffer to maintain the pH at 6.5.
> If you water has a high pH (7.9) with a lot of buffers in it dose adding
> more buffers from this product help keep the pH down? If it dose than
> are the buffers for high pH and low pH must different ???

The combination just creates a chemical soup that is bound to be worse for
your fish than simple clean water, changed frequently. Some are pure algae
fertilizers, BTW.

The stores like to propagate the pH mythology, as they can teach morons how
to test for it and can sell you expensive kits that are easy to use. Then
they sell buffers. All are a waste of time and money, IMHO, and usually do
more harm than good. 

Then, when the chemicals cause an algae bloom, they can sell you algaecide
products or deadly fish that suck your other fishes scales at night (Chinese
Algae Eaters) and create even more repeat business!

The most important water parameter, IMHO, is total dissolved solids (tds).
Except for the eggs of a few rain forest fish, the exact solids seem to be
fairly unimportant. In those rare cases, the amount of Calcium (GH) *may*
have some effect on hatching ability (the jury's still out on that).
Otherwise tds is closely related to osmotic pressure. That's a thing that
allows fish with "salty" blood to live in fresh water. If you shock a fish
by dumping from hard, high tds, water into very soft, low tds, water, the
fresh water pours across the membranes and can explode cells in gills and
skin. It takes a fish up to hours to adjust the three-level regulation
system to keep cell fluids in balance. Going the other way abruptly can
dehydrate cells, but tends to be a bit less fatal. That's why we often have
to drip acclimate new fish over a period of a few hours.

Hard (high tds) water tends to have a higher pH, because CaCO3 and MgCO3
(and their bicarbonates) are common buffers for the higher pH. Soft water
(low tds) is often below 7 in pH because dissolved atmospheric CO2 drives
the pH down and buffers are absent. Dumping the fish from the former water
to the latter almost always kills it, even with temp. (and even pH) exactly
matched. The easy-to-measure thing was the pH difference, so the mythology
of "pH shock" persists.

I routinely subject fish to huge pH shifts, as much as two full points, and
can observe no effects whatsoever. Scheel, in his Atlas, said he did as much
as three points with the same result.

The point of all this is to recognize what is important to your fish and
ignore the lfs mythology.

On the very rare occasions when I wish to recreate black-water or
rain-forest conditions for a new wild fish, I'll first soften the water by
adding lots of RO or equivalent, then use peat and/or oak leaves to provide
gentle humic acids to overcome any residual buffering and drop the pH to a
desired level. Peat alone does not work on hard tap water in most areas, for
you must lower buffering by dilution, first.

By the second or third generation, most of our killies adapt pretty well to
our US tap water, which tends to be hard, high tds, and high pH (by EPA
mandate) in most of the country. Those unfortunate enough to live in
soft-water areas can overcome the worst problems by adding a little rock or
kosher salt to their tanks to gently raise the tds. That reduces
dramatically the osmotic stress across gill-cell membranes.

Cells usually contain fluids with a tds about like sea water. Ocean fish
need nearly no osmotic regulatory system. As the water gets lower in tds
(fresher), the osmotic pressure gets higher and the fish has to work harder
to keep outside water from flooding and diluting body fluids. Pure
distilled, DI (deionized) or RO (Reverse Osmosis) water are the toughest of
all on the fish. Tempering those with some tap water or salt is usually a
good idea, and the fish will suffer far less stress.

If you use chemical buffers or acid, you should buy a $50 tds meter, and
carefully adjust the chemistry of your new change water, every time, so it
does not shock the fish. If you don't, they will not breed and will always
be subject to every disease and parasite that comes along. Then the lfs can
sell you some *more* "cures."

All of these admonitions apply equally well to eggs, for they may have
*less* ability to maintain fluid properties in changing tds water than fish,
with their complex 3-level osmotic-barrier system.

Use your tap water as is, and partially change it frequently. That way you
minimize stresses on your fish at each change and maximize your ability to
keep and breed them.

Wright

-- 
Wright Huntley, Fremont CA, USA, 510 494-8679  huntleyone at home dot com

         "DEMOCRACY" is two wolves and a lamb voting on lunch.
     "LIBERTY" is a well-armed lamb denying enforcement of the vote.
             *** http://www.self-gov.org/index.html ***
---------------
See http://www.aka.org/AKA/subkillietalk.html to unsubscribe
Follow-Ups: References: