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Re: Muriatic Acid
Wright Huntley wrote:
>
> 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 ***
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Someones may remember my qestions about karbonates,as most of us knew
there is a relationship betwen Ph and karbonates.It means then we lower
the carbonats we lower the Ph.I running my tanks with wery low carbonats
wich will give me low Ph,unfortionaly the Ph can go to low but it is not
a quick process so if we are observant at our tanks we can take
nessesary
precausions like add CACO3.How to see thath Ph is too low?We can messure
with a Phmeter or paper,but other things also happens as duckweed goes
white and snails climed up of the tank.My water is a exelent breeding
water and fryes comes in the tanks eggproduction is wery high diapterons
is not more diffcult to breed than striatum.Plants growt is wery good
(high CO2)The plants growt so good so I nearly dont have to change
water,I remove javamoss instead.Ph is betwen 5-6 but the fishes can take
down to 4,5 and some down to 4.A help to runn low Ph is to use seasalt
to keep the osmotic pressure upp have 1000-2000 microsiemens in my
tanks.My
feeling is thath it is nessesary or make it easier than we want to breed
many killies to keep the carbonates low.In such water as I have the
fungus doesent appear wich makes the eggstoring much easier.For the ones
ho knew German measuring system I have betwen 0,5-1 in german karbonat
degres.
Hope you can read my bad English.
Gunnar Aasblom.
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