"Vincent Femia" wrote in message
news
Will do. Can you post some links to data about how to use the TDS "
total
dissolved solids " data. Sounds very interesting.


Here is a real juicy article I found doing a www.google.com search for:

osmotic shock

then by:

fish gills

This should be required reading:
Muriatic Acid

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--------

a.. To: killietalk at aka_org
b.. Subject: Muriatic Acid
c.. From: gunnar asblom agakilli at algonet_se
d.. Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 21:56:33 -0800
e.. References: 007001bf6aa4$ba801440$f504f8d1 at ldd_net
38938DF2.878E9A0D at home_com

------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------

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 ***
---------------
See http://www.aka.org/AKA/subkillietalk.html to unsubscribe
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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------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
References:
a.. Muriatic Acid
a.. From: "Richard & Carol Dippold" dipdel5 at ldd_net
b.. Muriatic Acid
a.. From: Wright Huntley huntley1 at home_com




"Racf" wrote in message
...

"Vincent Femia" wrote in message
et...
The declorinator as I call it is actually "pH 7.0 Seachem Neutral
Regulator".

Sounds like you could do without it....and use Amquel.


"Racf" wrote in
message
...
Stan here, using my original handle again.

If the tap water filter is a Deionizer (DI) then you should
re-constitute the water maybe a little. If it just a carbon
filter
then
sure it removes metals and chlorine, but the salts and most
minerals
go
right through it. Electrolytes are key to fresh water fish.
They
are in
water unless great pain is taken to remove them, like RO/DI.

Tap water should be OK.

Of course there are always exceptions for weird fish, but they
are
exceptions. New fish from the store will need some extra
protection
and
special acclimation to your tank. The key is the
TDS/conductivity
of
the source and target water. Get a conductivity meter or a TDS
meter
(which is really the same thing in the range us humans could
afford).
Do not worry about the pH unless your gonna inject CO2 and all
that
baloney.

Products you need:

Amquel
NovaAqua
PolyAqua

There are all Kordon products. Sure there are many others on
the
market, but they were first and some believe the best. You will
use
the
Amquel the most followed by the other two when dealing with
transferring
fish. The Poly is the most extreme fish care. It puts a slime
coat
on
a fish like nothing else you will ever see.

I imagine your declorinator will be OK, but its probably not
Amquel.....and it takes care of Chlorine, chloramine, and free
ammonia.

Anyway, acclimate new fish via the drip method. Slowly match up
the
TDS
readings between the source water (fish bag) to your tank. Slow
slow
slow. No more than a TDS change of 50 per 1/2 hour......

Of course you want to make sure the fish you buy are not already
jacked.
Since you have a reef tank I guess you probably into this stuff
pretty
much except fresh water varies big time, while salt water really
is
salt
water....

Again, do not worry about the pH....although once in a blue moon
you
may
want to peek.

PS. Take your TDS meter to the fish store and measure the tank
your
fish is coming out of. They many times add something to the
bagged
water like a bag buddy or a squirt of something else.

You can phase out the Nova after your tank is running a while
and
fish
are in good shape.



--

-------------------------------------
For email remove junk
leaving the IP Addrress
Thats all from Racf
-------------------------------------
"Vincent Femia" wrote in message
et...
Stan,
Thanks for that info. Actually I probably should create a new
thread
for
this. So I apologize in advance. I use a product by Aquarium
Pharm.
called
tap water filter. It claims to remove chlorine and other
metals
from
the
water. I use this water on my FOWLR (fish only with live rock)
salt
tank.
So far I have no complaints with it. I recently setup a 29
gallon
freshwater
tank and it is becoming a planted tank. So I ask my LFS if I
would
need to
add anything to the water, since with the sal****er tank I add
the
sea
salt
mix. He said that I would need to replace the electrolytes in
the
fresh
water since I was removing some of the trace elements as well
as
bad
stuff
in the water. I don't recall the product he recommended but do
you
believe
that he is trying to sell me something else or is there merit
in
his
recommendation? At this point I still use tap water and treat
it
with
a
dechlorinator. I've been too lazy to actually use the
"filtered"
water. What
do you think?

Thanks,
Vinny

"Stan" wrote in message
...
Yes....sometimes. For Apistos just straight RO. For
breeding
Angels
just straight RO. For Angel grow-out, I gradually adapt
them
back
to my
tap water...very hard and pH of 8.2. Growing Discus: I mix
in
Calcium
Sulfate, Sea Salt, and Epsom salts and sometimes a bit of
baking
soda.
If I were breeding them, it would be straight RO.

The Apisto and Angel breeder tanks stay around a TDS of 40 -
80.
I
change 1/2 my water every week. I dose some plant
supplements
that
add
some minerals.


"Vincent Femia" wrote in message
t...
Stan,
Do you use any additives to the RO water?
Thanks
Vinny

"Stan" wrote in message
...
I have. I bought an RO unit so I could manage my
environments
better.
Since getting into RO and after buying a conductivity
meter
I
focus
a
lot less on pH and a lot more on the conductivity.

At sears in the water treatment department, they sell a
Hanna
TDS
meter
for about $20. Its says TDS, but really its
conductivity.
That
meter
will be a good investment.

For a while I bought RO water from the grocery store for
a
20
gallon
long Apisto tank. I paid about $180 for a 80 gallon per
day
RO
unit.
It produces about 60 gpd at my city waters temp. For
me, it
was
a
great
thing, but I have a basement with plenty of room for all
the
gear
and
storage containers.

Once you understand your water conditions you can decide
if
it
meets
your needs or if you need to alter your choice of fish
types.



"D&M" wrote in message
...
Just curious if anyone has ever had a problem with
high
alkalinity? My
tester only reads up to 240ppm, and it's way past
that,
which
accounts
for
my high pH, but besides high pH, has anyone ever had
any
other
problems?
I've heard of problems with plants and some fish, most
was
directed
toward
the pH levels involved, but that was about it.

Cheers