Things they say we should do but don't explain HOW??

[psimitry]

So I was reading Anthony Calfo's book over the weekend and noticed that there are several recommendations in the book, but they never explain HOW one should do it.

Case in point:

When adding top-off water and replacement water, one should match pH, alk and (naturally and in the proper case) salinity/temperature. And that pH should also be raised when doing an iodine dip (to kill my persistant zoanthid eating nudi's).

So how does one raise or lower pH?

Or raising alkalinity?

I thought this thread could be some kind of megathread.

 

[bertoni]

Well, most top-off water should be RO-DI, and you won't need to do any matching of parameters. For water changes, matching salinity is usually enough. pH should be relatively close, and I don't change more than about 20-25% at a shot except in emergencies. Measuring the new saltwater beforehand is a good idea, though, because some salt mixes require some aeration to reach a reasonable pH. A powerhead should fix that problem.

Alkalinity is a basic water parameter, and should be measured and supplemented as needed. This thread goes into supplementation schemes:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/feb2003/chem.htm

For an iodine dip, if it's in saltwater, I'd just remove enough from the tank for the dip, and replace with new saltwater. For fresh water, baking soda and baking powder can be used to set the pH.

 

[psimitry]

Yeah, my water change regime is pretty decent. I always selinity match my water using my groovy refractometer, in addition to airating it using a spare needlewheel pump and temperature matching as well.

My actual change water is RO purchased from a water store. But sadly, they don't do DI. Though they've been tested for TDS and been found to be extremely low.

The iodine dip is always a FW dip. Sadly, I didn't realize how badly pulsing xenia trees react to FW and it pretty much melted down.