Second New DIY Two Part Recipe with Higher pH Boost

[JCOLE]

I mixed mine in an old 1g Mott's apple juice bottle and it melted the plastic and got NaOH all over my laminate floors. Guess I lost my security deposit.

Thats not good! Wonder if these jugs will do the same. It comes in tomorrow so we shall see.

 

[Reefahholic]

“Add 283 grams of sodium hydroxide to 1 gallon of fresh water. It will get quite warm. Make sure it doesn't soften your container. This solution will contain about 1,900 meq/L of alkalinity (5,300 dKH). BE CAREFUL WITH THIS SOLUTION: IT HAS A pH ABOVE 14. Do not get it in your eyes or on your skin.”
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This is awesome. Is this like a hybrid 2-part Kalk combo?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Is this like a hybrid 2-part Kalk combo?

Yes.

 

[e34stx]

In a previous thread, I posted a true two part DIY recipe:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/new-diy-two-part-recipes-with-higher-ph-boost.344500/

But some folks may want to just swap the new ingredient into my 2/3 part recipe (as used by BRS, for example).

Here's the original recipe link (which has a lot more discussion on the details and rationale):

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/index.php

The new recipe is shown below. It has about twice the pH boost of the original recipe (#1) and should be added to a very high flow area. Initial cloudiness (magnesium hydroxide) is expected, but it should disperse and dissolve. If not, stop using it and figure out why.

Alk part

Add 283 grams of sodium hydroxide to 1 gallon of fresh water. It will get quite warm. Make sure it doesn't soften your container. This solution will contain about 1,900 meq/L of alkalinity (5,300 dKH). BE CAREFUL WITH THIS SOLUTION: IT HAS A pH ABOVE 14. Do not get it in your eyes or on your skin.

Calcium part

Dissolve 500 grams (about 2 ½ cups) of calcium chloride dihydrate (such as Dowflake 77-80% calcium chloride or ESV calcium chloride; see below for substitutes and sources) in enough water to make 1 gallon of total volume. You can dissolve it in about ½ gallon of water, and then pour that into the 1 gallon container and fill it to the top with more freshwater. This solution has about 37,000 ppm calcium.

Magnesium part

Dissolve Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate heptahydrate (3 cups) and magnesium chloride hexahydrate (5 cups) in enough purified freshwater to make 1 gallon total volume. There will likely be a precipitate that forms even if you fully dissolve both ingredients separately. That precipitate is calcium sulfate (calcium as an impurity in the magnesium chloride and sulfate from the Epsom salts). It is fine and appropriate to dose the precipitate along with the remainder of the fluid by shaking it up before dosing.

This solution is added much less frequently or in lower volume than the other two parts. Add 16% as much as the other two parts. Over the time you add 1 gallon of the others, 1 add 610 mL (2 ½ cups) of this solution. You can add it all at once or, preferably, over time as you choose, depending on the aquarium's size and set up. Add it to a high flow area, preferably a sump. In a very small aquarium, or one without a sump, I suggest adding it slowly.

hi please can you confirm a cup is 128g? thanks

 

[Chrisanthellae]

Just switched to this recipe a few days ago and wanted to share my experience.

My tank is almost 3 years old now but I've never had much coralline and corals have always grown slowly or stayed mostly the same (except softies, they grow well). Within a week of starting this new recipe, coralline growth exploded. Alkalinity started dropping quickly. I had to increase my dose by 50% on day 2. I doubled it on day 4. I doubled it again on day 5! Corals seem happy but it's too early to comment on their growth. I suspect the rapid proliferation of coralline is the primary reason for the spike in consumption at the moment.

The tank was very low on pH, typically barely scraping by at a 7.7-7.8. It's in the same room as a CO2 injected freshwater planted tank... Seems to hang around 8.0 now. I'm sure that will go up as alkalinity consumption continues to skyrocket lol

I used this over the new recipe with magnesium built in since I still had a lot of the old soda ash 2 part left and didn't want to waste the calcium part. Will switch to the more complete recipe once this batch is used up!

 

[Reefahholic]

hi please can you confirm a cup is 128g? thanks

236g I believe

 

[Reefahholic]

1 gram is = to 1 mL. This applies to water only I believe.

If you were to calculate dry powders or something like rice it would be different. What are you trying to weigh?

Randy can you clarify??

 

[Reefahholic]

I think it’s a matter mass, density, and volume.

 

[Chrisanthellae]

Yeah I don't think a volumetric measurement will produce reliable results with substances like sodium hydroxide or Epsom salt since the density will vary between sources due to different granule/particle sizes. Best to just get a cheap scale. You may even already have one in the kitchen.

 

[e34stx]

Hi yes thats what I thought but the mag recipe uses cups and I wondered why it’s not in g’s?

 

[LimestoneCowboy]

@Randy Holmes-Farley Is it best to run through our Soda ash Alk mixture in my dosing containers before switching to the new NaOH mixture or can we just start topping that solution off with the NaOH as I convert over? Wasn't sure if there was going to be a reaction issue between the soda ash and the NaOH. Thank you

 

[e34stx]

Just wondering…I’m ok with using redsea Mag with the alk and calcium recipes? Thanks

 

[LimestoneCowboy]

Also, @Randy Holmes-Farley one other question. I use a dosetronic/alkatronic for my Ca/KH/Mg dosing and correction so I need to normalize all 3 parts of solution so they can be dosed at the same amount. Given the amounts you outline Ca/KH seem like they can be equal parts, but would I change the concentration of the Mg then lower so I could dose the same amount as the Ca/KH? Any idea how much MgSO4/MgCl that would amount to? Appreciate your help as always!

 

[LimestoneCowboy]

This is what I have come up with so I can dose it 1:1:1 ratio. Would love a quick check of my method here. I reduced the Magnesium via the 16% comment in the page 1 recipe. The Tropic Marin A and K, I carried that over from a previous method to add in the trace. Thx
Part A-Alkalinity 283g/gallon Sodium Hydroxide (I add ~200ml Tropic Marin A to this for Trace)
Part B-Calcium+Sr 500g/gallon BRS CaCl and 8.3g/gallon SrCl ( I add about 200ml Tropic Marin K for Trace)
Part C-Magnesium 108g/gallon MgCl and 155 g/gallon MgSO4

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hi yes thats what I thought but the mag recipe uses cups and I wondered why it’s not in g’s?

My recipes got by weight, and I also provide cup based measurements for ease of use, even though it may not be super accurate across brands with slightly different dry powder density.

The magnesium part is dosed at 610 mL per gallon of the alk part, so that works out to 610: 3785 or 1:6.2

Thus, if you want to dose 1:1:1, the magnesium part should be diluted more (take 1 part of the usual recipe and 5.2 parts water and it will diluted properly for 1:1;1.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

@Randy Holmes-Farley Is it best to run through our Soda ash Alk mixture in my dosing containers before switching to the new NaOH mixture or can we just start topping that solution off with the NaOH as I convert over? Wasn't sure if there was going to be a reaction issue between the soda ash and the NaOH. Thank you

It's OK to start topping off the containers, as long as you are making the same alk potency using the hydroxide. if you are making it more potent in alk per mL, then I'd wait to avoid possible precipitation of sodium carbonate.

 

[LimestoneCowboy]

It's OK to start topping off the containers, as long as you are making the same alk potency using the hydroxide. if you are making it more potent in alk per mL, then I'd wait to avoid possible precipitation of sodium carbonate.

Awesome. Thank you for the confirmation. Does my chart a couple posts up make sense for the dilution so you can dose 1:1:1? Thanks

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Awesome. Thank you for the confirmation. Does my chart a couple posts up make sense for the dilution so you can dose 1:1:1? Thanks

Yes.

 

[Chrisanthellae]

Couple questions...

How likely is it, while using NaOH, to reach a point where the pH boosting effect is too high to continue using it as the only source of Alkalinity?

Do any of the tank dosers/controllers (profilux/alkatronic/etc) support splitting a dose automatically based on pH? Logically speaking, something like this (sorry, I'm a programmer but don't have any hand-on experience with a controller so this is just pythonic pseudo-code ):

def alk_dose(pH, dose_amount):
    if pH >= 8.3:
        dose(dose_amount, Na₂CO₃)
    elif  8.2 < pH < 8.3:
        dose(0.5*dose_amount, Na₂CO₃)
        dose(0.5*dose_amount, NaOH)
    else:
        dose(dose_amount, NaOH)

This could be further refined to use a continuous scale instead of just dosing 50/50 to maintain a target. Something like:

    elif  8.2 < pH < 8.3:
        pH_factor = (pH - 8.2)*10
        dose(pH_factor*dose_amount, Na₂CO₃)
        dose((1-pH_factor)*dose_amount, NaOH)

This approach still seems pretty naive and ignores the size of the dose and the actual resulting pH effect. As an extreme example if you're dosing 100ml in one go, and your pH is at 8.21, this logic would add 90ml of NaOH which would probably be way too much! (unless the probe senses the increase in time to stop).

Alternatively, the controller could take into account the system volume as well as the size of the dose and the current pH and use that to calculate the ratio in which to dose... I don't have the chemistry skills to pseudo-code that off-the-cuff though.

Am I wayyy overthinking this? Am I even making sense?

......Anyway, I just ordered a Pinpoint to keep better tabs on pH, but would like to get a full tank controller someday and use the Pinpoint for my freshwater tank instead.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Couple questions...

How likely is it, while using NaOH, to reach a point where the pH boosting effect is too high to continue using it as the only source of Alkalinity?

Depends on how much alk you are dosing per day, and the aeration of the tank water. The concern is the same as when using limewater/kalkwasser. The pH may get higher than some prefer, especially if the water is not well aerated (e.g., no skimmer). In my tank, the pH got higher than I want when using kalkwasser only when I took my skimmer offline.