Re: muriatic acid

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Re: muriatic acid
From: PacNeil at aol_com
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 15:37:25 -0400

In a message dated 96-07-18 03:59:18 EDT, Dave Gomberg wrote:

< Is easy and cheap.  Buy muriatic acid (used for etching cement) at
< your hardware store.  Put your sand in a 5 gallon plastic pail and
< add water just over the sand.   Add a cup of muriatic acid and stir. 
< Wait an hour and stir again.   When you stop getting bubbles when you
< stir, add another cup of acid.  If you get no more bubbles, rinse 10
< times carefully and use.  Otherwise, proceed as above (stir and wait). 

I second this, when setting up my most recent aquarium, I wanted to use dark
gravel. The only dark gravel I could find was beach gravel and had bits of
shell in it. I wnated a low PH and didn't want to risk the rise caused by
"stuff" in the gravel. I used about a quart of muriatic acid to disolve all
the shell pieces and other things after much rinsing until the water came
clear, there were no more shells and the PH holds in the aquarium. So in my
experience it works.

Neil Schneider