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Reconstituters....

Hi all,
Yes it will.

Cheers Darrel

Hi Darrel,

Thanks. I have a hypothesis that I would like to share and here seems to be a good a place as any. Feel free to move this to it’s own thread if deemed necessary.

I wanted to raise the dKH in my tank so I added 2tps of KHCO3 to my 85l tank. According to rotala calculator this adds a whopping 50ppm K+, 78ppm HCO3 and raised the dKH by 3.8

Joe Gargas wrote a fantastic piece in an aquarium magazine some time ago on water chemistry with particular focus on TDS and osmoregulation. I took a snippet from there that reads.

‘Some fish species can tolerate higher Conductivity, TDS and Osmotic Pressures than others in comparison to their natural habitat. What makes matters worse, though, is when aquarium salt and other additives are added to the aquarium ... not only does the conductivity increase but now the ions that were in balance in the natural water (tap water or water source) are completely out of balance.
To explain this better, ionic imbalance occurs when Chloride and or Sodium become the major cations or anions in water, then it becomes imbalanced and unnatural. If you look at just about all fresh waters, with very few exceptions it is calcium and or magnesium that are the major cations, and sulfate, alkalinity/bicarbonate/ car- bonate are the major anoins. Even in Lake Tan- ganyika, which is the biggest exception to the freshwater rule, the principle cation is magnesium and the major anion is bicarbonate/carbonate.
These ions, even though they are water soluble, are much less soluble than the chloride and sodium ions. All aquarium additives have one thing in common: included in their products are chloride and sodium. It is the chloride ion then the sodium ion that are taken in by the freshwater fish due to their water solubility. When these ions are so numerous and are the chief cations and an- ions in an aquarium, the freshwater fish is under much stress osmoregulating, thus spending much energy as chloride and sodium are being taken
up.
Freshwater fish are hyperosmotic, which
means that they have to maintain a higher concentration of salts in their body than the surrounding water. Then, if that fish is moved to waters with lower chloride and lower sodium and naturally a lower conductivit, it is stressed further as water naturally moves to the higher ionic concentration (4).
When I was with Wardley/Hartz, we analyzed competitors’ products as we were looking for a product to compete with other conditioners. We tested them by analyzing blood work on fish. After using specific products, we saw that after 72 hours, the Cortisol (Cortisol is an indicator of stress. It is found in the blood and it is released as a response to stress) levels started to increase rapidly. One of the most characteristic aspects of stress in fish is osmoregulatory disturbance, which is related to the effects of both catecholamine and cortisol hormones. The extent of the disturbance following stress depends upon the ionic and osmotic gradients (difference) between the internal fluids of the fish and its surrounding environment (water). If the stress is persistent and of sufficient intensity, changes in the cellular structure of the gills may occur under the influence of cortisol. In this situation, increased death and turnover rates of branchial epithelial cells leads to accelerated aging of the gills. These degenerating and newly formed gill cells do not function normally, which further limits the fish’s ability to maintain water and ion homeostasis under stressful conditions. Thus, acute stress limits the fish’s capacity to osmoregulate, and prolonged periods of extreme stress may result in osmotic shock and death. This is especially true if the chloride and sodium ions are present in such abundance that they become the major anions and cations in the water superseding calcium, magnesium as the cations and alkalinity/carbonate/bicarbonate and sulfates as the anions. Even though the conductivity will always increase in an enclosed environment, it is the chloride ion then the sodium ion that are usually the culprits. That is especially true if the chloride anion along with the sodium cation increase, to the point that they are now the most abundant of both the cations and anions’

Now my tap water and hence tank water has very little magnesium with Calcium, Chloride, Sodium and Sulphates all being very close to each other in terms of concentration.

I would often have problems with water changes hit or miss that would result in fish gasping at the surface or becoming twitchy and erratic in movement. Often times I would lose fish the morning after a water change. I blamed my conditioner as thoughts of overdosing become apparent. I stopped changing water it got that bad opting for infrequent changes with rain water.

After a long time not changing water with tap the plants began to suffer so I began remineralising with dolomite powder and EI nutrients. Things took off and I had a lush tank.

I got tired of the milky water that occurred after adding dolomite, though after a few hours it would disappear and the water clarity improved with plants clearly booming.

I decided to try KHCO3 as it would be much more soluble, raise my dKH the same amount and would not cloud the water. So I put my 2tsps in.

The next morning I had 1 dead long standing Amano shrimp and over 100 Malaysian trumpet snails holed up in their shells lying on the sand. Usually they would be all over. The fish seemed ok at the time until I did a huge water change. Then they all exhibited the same symptoms I’d seen time and time again only this time their slime coat came off. I added some magnesium sulphate and within half an hour they were recovering. I had also lost 2 of my 3 red cherry shrimp and couldn’t find the last two Amanos. Lastly, every single crypt I had melted.

I did enough water changes until the snails one by one started moving again. Then just to be 100% sure it was the KHCO3 and not the water that was causing the issues with the snails I dosed 2tsp KHCO3 again. I watched the snails close up again within 5 minutes. The water changes were worse for the fish this time until I remineralised.

My mind went back to the Joe Gargas article. What if adding all the KHCO3 had precipitated the calcium and other protective ions and resulted in osmoregulatory disturbances because thee highly sodium, potassium and chloride ions were now the most abundant ions in my very soft water and the fish were suffering an osmotic pressure shock of some kind? Something you would never normally see in most tap waters and most situations. I also wondered if the sodium thiosulphate was exacerbating historic water change issues due to the very low concentration of calcium, magnesium, sulphate and carbonate ions in my tap water.

My other thought was that pH increase due to kH addition making underlying ammonium ions toxic free ammonia but this never happened when adding dolomite which raises the KH the same amount based on dosage albiet much more slowly.

I have done several large water changes since but now always ensure I have many other ions in solution from EI dosages magnesium sulphate addition and dolomite and haven’t experienced these issues since. Crypts are slowly making a return.

Any credibility to this?

thanks
CJ
 
Interesting 🧐.....

Why did you not add some dGH as most Reconstituters contain dGH or dGH and dKH. Adding some dGh would have increased the Ca,Mg, Cl and SO4 also, which may of countered the effect


afterwards I did add some magnesium sulphates and dolomite powder. It seemed to work. I do that from now on when water changing and haven’t had an issue since.
 
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