Muriatic Acid

[Bilbo]

Just curious, that's all; do some of you use muriatic acid to condition your water before it goes in your tank? I am doing a search on site but haven't come across a thorough thread on the subject yet. I know it will drop your ph drastically but does the effect last? Does it completely neutralize the minerals in the water or does it just chemically drop the ph. I know when we use it at work it completely destroys any mineral bonding off our masonry products.

[troysdiiscus]

Just the word "muriatic acid" scares me...just curious, what minerals are you trying to neurtalize?? Being a store manager at Lowes where I use to work, that is some strong stuff.. I just use safe to conditon my water..

[Bilbo]

Educational, experimental and merely curious is all. I saw some people on here that use it and love it so I thought i might experiment with it.

[Quintin]

Dont experiment if ur system works.ull get lots of good info here but stick to what works.U dnt need to fiddle with ur PH levels as long as they stable.The stuuf u want to add came from ur local fish shop?im sure it has apurpose but dnt over med ur discus if nt neccesary.Just my point of view but im only a beginner so double check my imput

[nikond70s]

i just use muriatic acid to lower my PH for my altums. only thing i measure is PH. i use 70% RO and 30% tap. using the acid does maintain the desire PH i want.

[Bilbo]

Dont experiment if ur system works.ull get lots of good info here but stick to what works.U dnt need to fiddle with ur PH levels as long as they stable.The stuuf u want to add came from ur local fish shop?im sure it has apurpose but dnt over med ur discus if nt neccesary.Just my point of view but im only a beginner so double check my imput

Argg... lets stick to topic here. This forum is bad about this sometimes. I am not here to ask advice about whether or not you think I should experiment or not. I specifically asked about muriatic acid. I have many tanks and many vats and many fishes of different types. I am a breeder. I ALWAYS keep an open mind about new and different things and I ALWAYS like to experiment. I have discovered new techniques this way and have adapted techniques that other people have used through the years. But, just so you know, yes I don't alter my main methods at the drop of the hat. But I do like to test things on the side and I recommend that to any hobbiest or breeder who can do so to do it as well. A person with several tanks doesn't have to experiment on their main system or tanks, lol. Just get you one tank to the side, throw some cull fish in it and then test away. Pretty simple actually.

[Bilbo]

i just use muriatic acid to lower my PH for my altums. only thing i measure is PH. i use 70% RO and 30% tap. using the acid does maintain the desire PH i want. Cool beans. Did you use muriatic acid long term like this?

[nc0gnet0]

There are some people that do use it, it can lead to an unstable ph depending on your buffers, it may take alot of it to get the desired effect if you have alot of calcum in your water, and the key would to be able to replicate it time and time again. In my opinion it's just one more thing that can go wrong, and using RO is a much better and much easier replicated process. Domestic Discus could really care less about PH, rather they are more concerned with water softness. Wilds I hear are another story, but I cannot comment on these as I have no first hand experiance.

[Bilbo]

There are some people that do use it, it can lead to an unstable ph depending on your buffers, it may take alot of it to get the desired effect if you have alot of calcum in your water, and the key would to be able to replicate it time and time again. In my opinion it's just one more thing that can go wrong, and using RO is a much better and much easier replicated process. Domestic Discus could really care less about PH, rather they are more concerned with water softness. Wilds I hear are another story, but I cannot comment on these as I have no first hand experiance.excellent

[Second Hand Pat]

While you are asking about muriatic acid I think this maybe a better approach should you want to go there. A friend shared this with me a while back. Note that I have not tried this and prefer RO water like Rick does and agree with his reasoning.

Successfully lowering pH and with phosphoric acid.

I have in the past tried many times to lower my tap water’s pH with acid. Mostly I used muriatic acid but every time I would dose a batch of water the next day the water would rebound to it’s original pH level.

My local water here has a pH of 7.8 on average and 200 ppm of hardness on average. Of course both values will fluctuate depending on how much rain we have received as a local river is our source.

My good friend Marc Weiss gave me this method of using acid which he assured me would work. I was reluctant to trying it as am quite hard headed and was sure my tap water’s pH and buffering level couldn’t be overcome with acid.

Here is how I discovered how much acid needed to overcome the pH and buffering level of my local tap water.

First I got a five gallon bucket and added exactly four gallons of my tap water. I put three air stones which had a strong air-flow running through each one. I let the water sit in the bucket for 12 hours while aerating the water heavily. I checked the pH as soon as I put the water in the bucket and then 12 hours later. I noticed the pH was around 7.4 at first but 12 hours later my hand held Hanna pH monitor read 7.8. The water had to be degassed. The heavy aeration released the carbon dioxide which was at a more concentrated level right out of the tap. I then took a small amount of phosphoric acid, (.4 cc or .4 ml using a insulin type syringe ), (I won’t go into the safety guidelines one must follow when handling acid but here is a link which will sum it up for you http://www.utdallas.edu/ehs/manuals/...cid_safety.pdf ), the small amount was measured and recorded and injected into the bucket of water. After five minutes I checked and recorded the pH value. I then continued to heavily aerate the water for another 12 hours. After 12 hours the pH value which had dropped to a lower pH right after adding the acid to the water, had rebounded back to 7.8. So again I added the same amount of acid which I recorded again. Be sure to keep careful track of the exact amount of acid which you have added to the, (in this case), four gallons of water. I again checked the pH level five minutes later and then 12 hours later. Once again the pH rebounded. I had to do this a third time before the acid overcame the buffering level of my water, which I determined had been achieved when I tested the water in the bucket 12 hours later and the pH was at 6.3. I checked again 12 hours later again and still the pH was close to the same as twelve hours before at 6.4. A week later the pH value of the water was a steady 6.5. Therefore the amount of phosphoric acid needed to keep my pH at my target level of 6.3 to 6.5 was 1.2cc per 4 gallons of water. I was going to treat a 100 gallon Rubbermaid tube of water so I needed to multiply 1.2cc by 25, since 25 multiplied by 4 is 100. And I used 4 gallons of water to add the acid to. 1.2 multiplied by 25 gives us 30 ml. of acid or about 1 US fluid ounce. Everyone’s water supply won’t take the same amount of acid as I know of someone in Florida who had to add 3 ounces of acid to one hundred gallons of water to overcome their water’s buffering capacity.
You may ask why would someone want to do this. I believe Discus are happier and healthier in acidic water which wild discus live in. Yes I know many have successfully kept discus in hard alkaline tap water as I am one of these people. After I was not successful using acid before I tried this method, I then acquired a reverse osmosis unit and would use it to keep my water’s pH value low. I would add about 5 gallons of my tap water to 200 gallons of R.O water to achieve a pH of 6.5. The downfall of this is the pH value would crash after two days if daily water changes were not performed because the buffering capacity of the water was nearly zero in the nearly pure water. Also, using 1000 gallons of R.O. water a day gets very expensive because of the high rejection rate of my 700 gallon per day R.O. unit. Currently I use just under 3 ounces of phosphoric acid to treat each of my four 275 gallon poly tanks. My water consumption rate at the moment is 350 gallons a day as my fish room is only about 1/3 full. I am using a little less than one gallon of acid a month. I am paying about $39.00 a gallon for the phosphoric acid which is much cheaper than the water going through my R.O unit. If one decides to purchase a 15 gallon barrel of phosphoric acid you can get it for about $19.00 a gallon.

My fish’s colors are much more vivid. It is as if they have a night light inside of them. Also, I have seen a increase in breeding even in my wild caught fish.

[nikond70s]

Cool beans. Did you use muriatic acid long term like this?

this is my first time using muriatic acid. i have been using it for 2 months. and i do plan on using it long term. i age my water and add the acid and check the ph everyday. and the ph is pretty much stable all the time. i age and check ph for 3-4 days before doing a waterchange. so far everything is good. and i am keeping altums which are sensitive.

just be sure to wear heavy duty gloves when using it and be extremely careful when messing with acid. and its a good idea to have a bucket of water near by incase u get some on and u can immediately dilute it in the bucket of water. and always add acid to water. not the other way around. and when adding acid. just add lil at a time and check ph every 12-24 hours. and keep adding till its at your desire ph. then next time u know how much to add.

[troysdiiscus]

Pat, "you had me at HELLO" lol...wow....
While you are asking about muriatic acid I think this maybe a better approach should you want to go there. A friend shared this with me a while back. Note that I have not tried this and prefer RO water like Rick does and agree with his reasoning.

Successfully lowering pH and with phosphoric acid.

I have in the past tried many times to lower my tap water’s pH with acid. Mostly I used muriatic acid but every time I would dose a batch of water the next day the water would rebound to it’s original pH level.

My local water here has a pH of 7.8 on average and 200 ppm of hardness on average. Of course both values will fluctuate depending on how much rain we have received as a local river is our source.

My good friend Marc Weiss gave me this method of using acid which he assured me would work. I was reluctant to trying it as am quite hard headed and was sure my tap water’s pH and buffering level couldn’t be overcome with acid.

Here is how I discovered how much acid needed to overcome the pH and buffering level of my local tap water.

First I got a five gallon bucket and added exactly four gallons of my tap water. I put three air stones which had a strong air-flow running through each one. I let the water sit in the bucket for 12 hours while aerating the water heavily. I checked the pH as soon as I put the water in the bucket and then 12 hours later. I noticed the pH was around 7.4 at first but 12 hours later my hand held Hanna pH monitor read 7.8. The water had to be degassed. The heavy aeration released the carbon dioxide which was at a more concentrated level right out of the tap. I then took a small amount of phosphoric acid, (.4 cc or .4 ml using a insulin type syringe ), (I won’t go into the safety guidelines one must follow when handling acid but here is a link which will sum it up for you http://www.utdallas.edu/ehs/manuals/...cid_safety.pdf ), the small amount was measured and recorded and injected into the bucket of water. After five minutes I checked and recorded the pH value. I then continued to heavily aerate the water for another 12 hours. After 12 hours the pH value which had dropped to a lower pH right after adding the acid to the water, had rebounded back to 7.8. So again I added the same amount of acid which I recorded again. Be sure to keep careful track of the exact amount of acid which you have added to the, (in this case), four gallons of water. I again checked the pH level five minutes later and then 12 hours later. Once again the pH rebounded. I had to do this a third time before the acid overcame the buffering level of my water, which I determined had been achieved when I tested the water in the bucket 12 hours later and the pH was at 6.3. I checked again 12 hours later again and still the pH was close to the same as twelve hours before at 6.4. A week later the pH value of the water was a steady 6.5. Therefore the amount of phosphoric acid needed to keep my pH at my target level of 6.3 to 6.5 was 1.2cc per 4 gallons of water. I was going to treat a 100 gallon Rubbermaid tube of water so I needed to multiply 1.2cc by 25, since 25 multiplied by 4 is 100. And I used 4 gallons of water to add the acid to. 1.2 multiplied by 25 gives us 30 ml. of acid or about 1 US fluid ounce. Everyone’s water supply won’t take the same amount of acid as I know of someone in Florida who had to add 3 ounces of acid to one hundred gallons of water to overcome their water’s buffering capacity.
You may ask why would someone want to do this. I believe Discus are happier and healthier in acidic water which wild discus live in. Yes I know many have successfully kept discus in hard alkaline tap water as I am one of these people. After I was not successful using acid before I tried this method, I then acquired a reverse osmosis unit and would use it to keep my water’s pH value low. I would add about 5 gallons of my tap water to 200 gallons of R.O water to achieve a pH of 6.5. The downfall of this is the pH value would crash after two days if daily water changes were not performed because the buffering capacity of the water was nearly zero in the nearly pure water. Also, using 1000 gallons of R.O. water a day gets very expensive because of the high rejection rate of my 700 gallon per day R.O. unit. Currently I use just under 3 ounces of phosphoric acid to treat each of my four 275 gallon poly tanks. My water consumption rate at the moment is 350 gallons a day as my fish room is only about 1/3 full. I am using a little less than one gallon of acid a month. I am paying about $39.00 a gallon for the phosphoric acid which is much cheaper than the water going through my R.O unit. If one decides to purchase a 15 gallon barrel of phosphoric acid you can get it for about $19.00 a gallon.

My fish’s colors are much more vivid. It is as if they have a night light inside of them. Also, I have seen a increase in breeding even in my wild caught fish.

[Bilbo]

While you are asking about muriatic acid I think this maybe a better approach should you want to go there. A friend shared this with me a while back. Note that I have not tried this and prefer RO water like Rick does and agree with his reasoning.

Successfully lowering pH and with phosphoric acid.

I have in the past tried many times to lower my tap water’s pH with acid. Mostly I used muriatic acid but every time I would dose a batch of water the next day the water would rebound to it’s original pH level.

My local water here has a pH of 7.8 on average and 200 ppm of hardness on average. Of course both values will fluctuate depending on how much rain we have received as a local river is our source.

My good friend Marc Weiss gave me this method of using acid which he assured me would work. I was reluctant to trying it as am quite hard headed and was sure my tap water’s pH and buffering level couldn’t be overcome with acid.

Here is how I discovered how much acid needed to overcome the pH and buffering level of my local tap water.

First I got a five gallon bucket and added exactly four gallons of my tap water. I put three air stones which had a strong air-flow running through each one. I let the water sit in the bucket for 12 hours while aerating the water heavily. I checked the pH as soon as I put the water in the bucket and then 12 hours later. I noticed the pH was around 7.4 at first but 12 hours later my hand held Hanna pH monitor read 7.8. The water had to be degassed. The heavy aeration released the carbon dioxide which was at a more concentrated level right out of the tap. I then took a small amount of phosphoric acid, (.4 cc or .4 ml using a insulin type syringe ), (I won’t go into the safety guidelines one must follow when handling acid but here is a link which will sum it up for you http://www.utdallas.edu/ehs/manuals/...cid_safety.pdf ), the small amount was measured and recorded and injected into the bucket of water. After five minutes I checked and recorded the pH value. I then continued to heavily aerate the water for another 12 hours. After 12 hours the pH value which had dropped to a lower pH right after adding the acid to the water, had rebounded back to 7.8. So again I added the same amount of acid which I recorded again. Be sure to keep careful track of the exact amount of acid which you have added to the, (in this case), four gallons of water. I again checked the pH level five minutes later and then 12 hours later. Once again the pH rebounded. I had to do this a third time before the acid overcame the buffering level of my water, which I determined had been achieved when I tested the water in the bucket 12 hours later and the pH was at 6.3. I checked again 12 hours later again and still the pH was close to the same as twelve hours before at 6.4. A week later the pH value of the water was a steady 6.5. Therefore the amount of phosphoric acid needed to keep my pH at my target level of 6.3 to 6.5 was 1.2cc per 4 gallons of water. I was going to treat a 100 gallon Rubbermaid tube of water so I needed to multiply 1.2cc by 25, since 25 multiplied by 4 is 100. And I used 4 gallons of water to add the acid to. 1.2 multiplied by 25 gives us 30 ml. of acid or about 1 US fluid ounce. Everyone’s water supply won’t take the same amount of acid as I know of someone in Florida who had to add 3 ounces of acid to one hundred gallons of water to overcome their water’s buffering capacity.
You may ask why would someone want to do this. I believe Discus are happier and healthier in acidic water which wild discus live in. Yes I know many have successfully kept discus in hard alkaline tap water as I am one of these people. After I was not successful using acid before I tried this method, I then acquired a reverse osmosis unit and would use it to keep my water’s pH value low. I would add about 5 gallons of my tap water to 200 gallons of R.O water to achieve a pH of 6.5. The downfall of this is the pH value would crash after two days if daily water changes were not performed because the buffering capacity of the water was nearly zero in the nearly pure water. Also, using 1000 gallons of R.O. water a day gets very expensive because of the high rejection rate of my 700 gallon per day R.O. unit. Currently I use just under 3 ounces of phosphoric acid to treat each of my four 275 gallon poly tanks. My water consumption rate at the moment is 350 gallons a day as my fish room is only about 1/3 full. I am using a little less than one gallon of acid a month. I am paying about $39.00 a gallon for the phosphoric acid which is much cheaper than the water going through my R.O unit. If one decides to purchase a 15 gallon barrel of phosphoric acid you can get it for about $19.00 a gallon.

My fish’s colors are much more vivid. It is as if they have a night light inside of them. Also, I have seen a increase in breeding even in my wild caught fish. Wow. Very intriguing. Hmmm. So, have you tried the same method using muriatic? In other words, have you tried the little by little method to see how much muriatic it would take to use up the buffer until you achieved the desired ph? Or are you saying that muriatic will never use up enough buffer? Why does the Phosphoric acid work but not the muriatic? Very curious. I will check into phosphoric acid as well.
I guess I am also asking.... when acid is added until the buffer is used up, does this mean that the minerals in the water are simply destroyed? Does this mean that -lets say extremely hard water that discus eggs would not hatch out in- will then hatch out in the same water treated with acid because the minerals are destroyed because of the acid? I don't know how acid effects the minerals. I know it does something to them but don't know exactly what. This is very interesting stuff.

[MSD]

That stuff is dangerous, is it really worth it to monkey around and appear on World's Dumbest Fish keepers?

[Second Hand Pat]

Bilbo, I replied to your PM. I have not used acid myself which I stated at the top of my original post only sharing some perhaps related information. Regarding using acid to lower ph I do not know if it lower GH also. Seems like you could test this yourself.
Pat

[Bilbo]

That stuff is dangerous, is it really worth it to monkey around and appear on World's Dumbest Fish keepers? Worth the cull fish that is going to be thrown out anyway? You bet. Worth it to cure my curiosity and to learn more? You bet.

[Bilbo]

Bilbo, I replied to your PM. I have not used acid myself which I stated at the top of my original post only sharing some perhaps related information. Regarding using acid to lower ph I do not know if it lower GH also. Seems like you could test this yourself.
Pat Yep, I will. Thanks!

[timmy82]

My expierience with acid I would only get a small bounce if I didn't have a buffer and a properly cycled tank. I more prefer just adding R/O but do sometimes use acid for some persistant pairs and triggering different type of fish. I pre diluted to a large barrel and use it in a less concertrate way. 30 ml per 30 ltrs would have the PH in barral around 2.5 i only use that at 40ml per dose and re check.

[MSD]

Worth the cull fish that is going to be thrown out anyway? You bet. Worth it to cure my curiosity and to learn more? You bet.

Well the culls mean nothing, I just meant your eyes and skin and nasal membranes, its some rough stuff and not very forgiving.

[Bilbo]

Well the culls mean nothing, I just meant your eyes and skin and nasal membranes, its some rough stuff and not very forgiving. Lol, I am a second generation mason. I have been around and used muriatic acid on countless wash downs after we complete a job. Healthy as a horse. However, years ago i did spill a bucket of it on a guys head beneath me though. He was not to happy.

[yim11]

That stuff is dangerous, is it really worth it to monkey around and appear on World's Dumbest Fish keepers?

LOL if the juice don't get him on there the acid will!

[nc0gnet0]

Also, using 1000 gallons of R.O. water a day gets very expensive because of the high rejection rate of my 700 gallon per day R.O. unit.

Take a second ro membrane and booster pump, and feed it with your waste water from your first unit. You will increase your ro output and decrease your waster water out. Can I ask what pressure you are running your membranes at and what type of unit you have?

Rick

[twocat]

I dropped some on my leather boot when I was using it. Its now air condition.

Mark

[Bilbo]

LOL if the juice don't get him on there the acid will! My discus can pee further than your discus-

[plecocicho]

Its better to use some ro water and white peat. I even soften my water with white peat bomb and then mix it with normal tap water to acheive pH of 6,2-6,6.