Baking Soda??? Question....

[Mantis_22]

Ok today I opened up my new biology book and looked around with water expirements. Well there is this one that is very basic. You get a container, 25mg of baking soda, fill the container with water and drop a very hardy plant in the container. After that put the baking soda in the water and put a 125watt light up to the container for a few days. Then it says do it without the baking soda. In all it said baking soda when added gives plants a large boost of CO2 in the water? Is this true,, just by adding baking soda to the tank and with large light amounts will keep plants healthy by feeding baking soda.. I feel like such a noob but can someone clarify all this for me? :confused:

[Luca Brazzi]

The problem with adding Baking Soda to the tank is that it will affect the pH.

[scott]

Do a search in the DIY section on CO2 and I think you will get some better ideas. Baking soda will throw off your PH and KH in a big way if not done properly, and even then I have heard horror stories.

[wetmanNY]

Your first job would be to discover what "baking soda" is. It's real name will give you some information about it. Its name "baking soda" only tells you what Mom does with it sometimes.

[RTR]

Baking soda should be sodium bicarbonate, but it is a bit strange that a purported biology text did not so specify.

One of the disassociations of carbonate/bicarbonate/carbonic acid will give CO2, but to have useful quantities of CO2 from this you are going to have to go beyond the parameters healthy to fish, otherwise the quantities are trivial.

http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/hardwater.shtml

Note: That article does not give the "normal' balances of the materials, that would be a chemistry text and far out of scope for a hobby publicatoin.

Of course, if that (unspecified) 'very hardy plant' happens to be Val or a few others, it can use the bicarbonate directly, bypassing the CO2 requirement for carbon source. Of course the pH will be approaching 10...