Biological liquid carbon

[zozo]

Does adding any acid to any any base not result in a reaction that produces co2?

If the water contains a buffer it does.. Afaik for us that would be Carbonates and Phosphates that buffers acids.. But the CO2 produced by this process anything above natural equilibrium will gass off into the atmosphere. Now i do not now if water with lower pH has a higher natural CO2 equilibrium. It likely is related to its kH value.

Iexperiemnted some time with acids with growing crops in the garden.. After reading about beter ion exchange in slightly acidic invironment and this can be achieved by lowering the fert solution pH before you add it. And or also use peat etc. mixed into the soil to lowet it's pH will result in beter producing crop.

For watering terrestrial plants you can go as low as pH 5 with the fert solution..

I also noticed if you leave the readily mixed pH 5 fert solution stand for 24 hours it simply raised back to +/- pH 7 again.. Than if i tried to lower that again with adding some more acid the party started with the pH+ solution. I never measured kH in those days, but i guess it alters with adding acids, because after adding it again after 24 hours buffering it rapidly and drasticaly crashed bellow pH5 with adding much less acid after that. By experience you learn for example 10 litre fert solution needs x amount of acid to lower it's pH 8 to a certain point. But once it has all buffered and raised again this amount changes drasticaly. If this buffering and raising again id solely a carbonate/phospate reaction with producing co2 that gasses off i don't know, i doubt that because of the crashes i experienced.

I should actualy know why i red it dozens of times, but somehow i can't make my brain repeat the excact procedure and formulas.

But bottom line, knowing why is fun but not a need to know. Just knowing this risk is enough not to play with acidic stuf in a fish tank. If so maybe at very tiny dosages barely affecting the pH. Lowering pH several units, it comes dangerously close to crash point to stabilize it. Which i think is extremely difficult with doing weekly water changes and extremely crash risky with doing very little water changes.

A guess, lowering pH has more with beter ion exchange in plant v. ferts than the Co2 it produces. Lots of people report accelerated plant growth with adding vinigar to the a planted tank. Personaly i rather skip it, i don't trust it enough and don't want to drive me self crazy with monitoring it in a dairy like a boatswain. Learn to choose the correct plants and grow them in what you get is more forgiving and more fun..

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

I had a similar thing well back in the day zozo before I found out about Indian Almond leaves etc. My water comes out the tap with virtually nothing in it. The only stuff in there is actually added by the water board so zero carbonate. I tried using a waterlife product if I remember called humaquat which added tannins and humic acids which I thought would benefit my cardinal tetras and crashed the system. After that I switched to Tetra Blackwater which didn't lower ph. Now I just use botanicals which are much milder.

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

...... understanding of it all is that above water there's loads of co2, we like to keep plants because they look nice that in many cases don't want to live under water or wouldn't naturally spend all of their lives there because there's not enough co2 for them to thrive so the answer is to raise the amount of co2 available underwater by dissolving co2 gas in there and controlling how much light forces the speed of growth until we hit a point where hopefully the plant doesn't dissolve through starvation.

Pretty much. Something like Hemianthus callitrichoides is absolutely <"fine emersed"> at 400ppm CO2, and easy to grow, but requires high CO2 submerged.

now we're on with Citric acid which again no one seems to know why it works

Because all the "LC" molecules, that seem to increase plant growth, are fairly small molecules/ions, I'd assume they all work in a similar way, but you'd need to talk to plant physiologist to find out what the likely mode of action is, and how they get into the plant..
You have:

• The acetate ion, CH3CO2−
• Citric acid, C6H8O7
  
• Glutaradehyde, OCH(CH2)3CHO (as a hydrate)

But the CO2 produced by this process anything above natural equilibrium will gas off into the atmosphere

Yes it will, it is just like when you open a bottle of a carbonated drink, the pressure falls and CO2 comes out of solution. If you leave the drink un-stoppered for any length of time it will lose its fizz as all the extra CO2 is lost along its diffusion gradient with the atmosphere.

Afaik for us that would be Carbonates and Phosphates that buffers acids

Yes, but it would need to be carbonate buffered and then the state of the DIC will change dependent on the pH.

You can see you don't have any more TIC, you always have the same amount, in different forms (regulated by the 400ppm CO2 in the atmosphere).

But once it has all buffered and raised again this amount changes drasticaly.

That is right, that is how buffering works, it isn't a linear process, it is pretty much stasis followed by a rapid change.

Now I just use botanicals which are much milder.

These are the pH titration curves for acid base titrations, it also shows why lowering/raising pH is much safer weak acids and bases.

It also shows why pH needs some interpretation, if you are around pH7 (or have water with few ions present), small changes in water chemistry (changes to the acid:base ratio) can cause large changes in pH.

cheers Darrel

 

[rebel]

Wonder whether anyone has done any experiments to put the above candidates head to head in controlled tanks?

 

[Oldguy]

at related maybe?

At high pH CO2 will be as bicarbonates. At very high pH it will be as carbonates (soda lakes)
At low pH CO2 will be as carbonic acid (assuming it exists, its salts exit but the free acid has not, to my limited knowledge, been isolated)
At lower pH it will be there as a dissolved gas. (the dissolved gas will be transiently bonded to water, hence high solubility for a gas)
There is a nice curvy graph which illustrates these relationships. High & low pH's are in terms relative to aquarium fish & plant care.

 

[Oldguy]

Darrel has piped me to the post with his graphs.