This is also my experience.lol
It is both exactly theoretically and experimentally accurate to say that bicarbonate dosing lowers pH a small amount when first dosed.
I've tried it, and published the results long ago, and anyone challenging me should simply try it themselves.
Everyone has baking soda in their home. It should not take more than 2 minutes to try if you have a pH meter.
Chemistry And The Aquarium: The Relationship Between Alkalinity And pH
Randy answers many questions in this complex relationship.reefs.com
From it:
Alkalinity Supplements
One of the most common issues that reefkeepers face involves supplementing alkalinity while maintaining a reasonable pH. Alkalinity supplements impact pH in a variety of ways. One of these ways is the immediate altering of the pH. Different alkalinity supplements have different immediate impacts on pH, as most reefkeepers are aware. This impact is why, for example, limewater needs to be added slowly to a tank but sodium bicarbonate does not.
For this discussion, let’s presume that we want to supplement the carbonate alkalinity of a reef tank. That is, in the end we want to increase the bicarbonate and carbonate levels in the tank. There are a variety of ways to achieve this end, and these different ways have different immediate impacts on pH. Three of these ways (and combinations thereof) are fairly common in reefkeeping. These ways are addition of bicarbonate, carbonate, and hydroxide. In a reef tank that is permitted to equilibrate its total CO2 levels with the atmosphere, these additions all end up with the same final pH. That is, it is only the amount of alkalinity added that determines the final pH, not the nature of the additive itself.
In the short term, however, the impact on pH is very different. To quantify this, I measured to pH change on adding 0.5 meq/L of each of these alkalinity supplements to freshly made salt water (Instant Ocean made to S=35; alkalinity measured to be 2.26 meq/L by titration). Here’s the result for the pH found immediately, and then after 24 and 120 hours of sitting, unstirred, in an open 500- mL beaker:
From this data it is clear to see the large increase in pH caused by the addition of hydroxide, and also the significant increase when using carbonate. Bicarbonate, on the other hand, shows the expected slight decrease in pH, but not nearly as much as is found with a strong acid of equal concentration. It is also clear that after sufficient time to equilibrate with atmospheric CO2, these differences disappear, and the pH is the same for all of the 0.5-meq/L alkalinity additions. This is an important result: in seawater in equilibrium with the atmosphere, for a given alkalinity there is a single pH that results, regardless of what was added to get to that alkalinity.
Supplement Initial pH 24 hour pH 120 hour pH none 8.10 8.11 8.21 0.5 meq/L HCO3- 8.06 8.15 8.33 0.5 meq/L CO3– 8.44 8.28 8.34 0.5 meq/L OH- 8.76 8.47 8.33 0.5 meq/L H+ 6.91 7.91 8.15
Here’s how to think of these additions. When these chemicals are added to the water, there is a change in the relative concentrations of carbonate and bicarbonate, and it is the ratio of these two ions that determines the pH.
well i can see your point looking at the graph and text!
Only in the sense that alkalinity increases tend to do that a little anyway. Photosynthesis is the major driver due to the inability of most tanks to fully equalise with CO2 in the air surrounding the aquarium.
That’s not what was said last night in the Bolus Livestream.
well its all in german... i would love to understand it fully, but me being your neighbours i can not even understand it all lol
I translated what was said about the Bicarbonate pH point that „some chemist“ made on a forum post that it doesn’t raise pH and the anwer was…
So he says that it’s incorrect that it doesn’t raise pH and you can test it yourself.
Personally I'd listen to a chemist, not a carpenter for this type of advice. Now, if I wanted a table and chairs, I wouldn't ask Randy to make me some, for example.
I also watched it for a while. But I just cannot stand it when he is bashing other people, products, the government, and whoever else. He often does this in his videos and interviews and it just puts me off.
The problem here is that this process may be doing more good than harm. I use a version of the process to remove phosphate from the aquarium, for example. Does it take out other stuff? Maybe. Does everything look ok? Appears to be. I've also always used kalk.
So I have read this A few times and I came to the conclusion they are saying the same thing unless something is being lost in translation.
yes exactly but the HTU tells you its the other way around
No the guy in the video says in my words „if that chemist on the forum claims that bicarbonate doesn’t raise pH he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and you (the viewers) can test that simply“
Ok so the guy is saying it does raise ph. I guess I got confused.
atleast for me it was clear from the english video last week, that they said ''its not the Bicarbonaat directly raising the PH''
I'm little confused but it seems to raise though
