Why can't I use vinegar to acidify my Calc. Reactor?

[Servillius]

I haven't done the math yet, but vinegar has a Ph of 2.4, carbonic acid is at about 5.6. There is way, way more to the chemistry than that, but in the worst ballpark job in history, the vinegar is some 2000 times more acidic than carbonic acid. Now normally, the advantage of the CO2 is that it can degas later on, but here's the thing... if you're dosing vodka or vinegar anyway, is there any reason why not dose it into your calcium reactor with a dosing pump as an acid source?

This seems cheaper and requires less chemical addition than having separate vodka/vinegar and CO@ regimens. The biggest problem I see is if more is required than you would normally dose for carbon purposes, but short of that, where am I wrong?

 

[mick243]

I'd expect that you'd get the same result as dosing calcium acetate on its own.

 

[HighlandReefer]

I think with the amount of vinegar you will be adding, you will end up with bacterial blooms. Vinegar is a carbon source like vodka. Also, the vinegar may reduce your pH level a bit more than the CO2 since CO2 will escape out your tank water.

Many hobbyists have experienced the bacterial blooms when adding vinegar to kalk water to increase the amount of calcium and alk you can derive from the kalk mix.

 

[Servillius]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15576055#post15576055 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by HighlandReefer
I think with the amount of vinegar you will be adding, you will end up with bacterial blooms. Vinegar is a carbon source like vodka. Also, the vinegar may reduce your pH level a bit more than the CO2 since CO2 will escape out your tank water.

Many hobbyists have experienced the bacterial blooms when adding vinegar to kalk water to increase the amount of calcium and alk you can derive from the kalk mix.

Certainly if you add too much vinegar, you'll have a problem as I said in my initial post, but if you think about it, it can't both be too acidic and cause an excess of blooming bacteria at the same time. It is either too acidic, in which case you dilute it until its the right amount acidic and use it, or its not acidic enough, in which case you have to use too much and it causes blooms. The point is, if the calcium reactor requires more than you would normally dose as part of your vodka dosing regimen, then this may not be a god idea ( although there may be ways around this problem). If, on the other hand, you can dose all you need to run the calcium reactor and get enough to satisfy your usual vodka dosing requirement (or if its less, add a bit more vodka to the tank in addition), isn't the dosing pump a hell of a lot cheaper, more stable, and less fiddly than all the damned CO2 gear?

 

[TheH]

Servillius: The thing here is comparing the pros/cons of a gas versus a liquid. CO2 can be compressed a whole lot, allowing a couple of months worth to fit into a 10lb. can. Liquids on the other hand can't be compressed (much). Even if you used sulfuric acid instead of vinegar, I think you'd find that you need to change reservoirs quite fast and things will get expensive.

CO2 is also pretty cheap as compared to vinegar.

Also, as HighlandReefer mentioned, CO2 will escape from your tank water, allowing the pH to return to 8.0+. Vinegar will not escape from your tank water, meaning that the pH will stay low.

 

[crazzyreefer]

but wont the increased in saturation of Kalk, bring the ph back up to above 8.0?

 

[Servillius]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15577546#post15577546 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by TheH
Servillius: The thing here is comparing the pros/cons of a gas versus a liquid. CO2 can be compressed a whole lot, allowing a couple of months worth to fit into a 10lb. can. Liquids on the other hand can't be compressed (much). Even if you used sulfuric acid instead of vinegar, I think you'd find that you need to change reservoirs quite fast and things will get expensive.

CO2 is also pretty cheap as compared to vinegar.

Also, as HighlandReefer mentioned, CO2 will escape from your tank water, allowing the pH to return to 8.0+. Vinegar will not escape from your tank water, meaning that the pH will stay low.

Ok, lets say I decide to vodka dose, but for some wierd reason, don't want to use vodka. I look into sugar, but that seems a pain to measure. Then I hear I can use vinegar. Fine, I do it and end up with a regimen of 2ml of vinegar a day.

No one would have a problem with this on these forums, correct? We're all for this sort of dosing, correct?

But that means whatever the bad effects of adding vinegar to the water are, they're irrelevant for my purposes, because they would be added regardless... we are already adding 2ml of vinegar. If its expensive, so what, its already going in. If it lowers Ph, so what, its already going in.

What I am asking is am I better off adding 2ml of vinegar to my tank every day for vodka dosing and separately adding CO2 for the reactor, or just adding the 2ml vinegar and letting it do both jobs?

 

[HighlandReefer]

IMHO, if you want to try using the vinegar to boost your calcium and alk, it may be wise to try it out first using it in a kalk mix for top-off. The best reason for doing it this way would be that you can pour off any contaminates from the bottom of your mixing container before you add them to your tank. In a reactor all the contaminates end up in your tank.

Randy explains in further details in this article:

The Self Purification of Limewater (Kalkwasser)
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/may2003/chem.htm

 

[TheH]

I'm not convinced that 2 ml of vinegar a day will lower the pH in the calcium reactor body from 8.0+ to the 6.6 range.

 

[Servillius]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15579074#post15579074 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by TheH
I'm not convinced that 2 ml of vinegar a day will lower the pH in the calcium reactor body from 8.0+ to the 6.6 range.

Honestly, neither am I.. I have yet to do the math. But I think its somewhere in the same ballpark, and I'll sit down and do it soon. Unless, that is, someone really wants to do it for me. Thing is, vinegar has a 2.4 Ph... thats a LOT more acid than the weenie acid CO2 spits out.

 

[HighlandReefer]

Dr Craig Bingman mentions your idea in his article:

Expanding the Limits of Limewater:
Adding Organic Carbon Sources
http://web.archive.org/web/20001102...twork.com/fish2/aqfm/1999/oct/bio/default.asp

From this article:

"Let's deal with the trivial notion of just dissolving carbon dioxide in limewater and then dripping it into your aquarium. If you think this won't work out very well, you are correct. Initially, all that would be accomlished is the formation of some solid calcium carbonate in your limewater bucket. And, it wouldn't really help your corals unless you kept shooting carbon dioxide into the bucket until the calcium carbonate formed redissolved. Then you would have something like the product of a calcium carbonate/carbon dioxide reactor in the bucket. If you kept it tightly sealed and dispensed it with a dosing pump, then you might be able to make that work, but it sounds like a nuisance to me. That would be basically a "œbatch" CaCO3/CO2 reactor. (I haven't tried this, and accordingly I don't know how it would compare to a CaCO3/CO2 reactor.)

Anyway, this wasn't what I had in mind. A different, and I think more productive, route is to spike the limewater with a source of organic carbon. As the limewater is gradually dosed into the aquarium, the organic compound we place in the limewater would serve as a food source for bacteria and perhaps other organisms in the aquarium. As they oxidize the added organic compound, carbon dioxide is generated. And presto, we now have some extra carbon dioxide in the system "” and that's exactly what we needed."

 

[chercm]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15576055#post15576055 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by HighlandReefer
I think with the amount of vinegar you will be adding, you will end up with bacterial blooms. Vinegar is a carbon source like vodka. Also, the vinegar may reduce your pH level a bit more than the CO2 since CO2 will escape out your tank water.

Many hobbyists have experienced the bacterial blooms when adding vinegar to kalk water to increase the amount of calcium and alk you can derive from the kalk mix.

can adding vinegar to the kalk reactor add to cyano bacteria ?

 

[Servillius]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15586723#post15586723 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by chercm
can adding vinegar to the kalk reactor add to cyano bacteria ?

Please don't mistake this for rudeness in any way. Everyone here is being very helpful, but I feel like I'm doing a bad job of explaining something here.

Many of us are ALREADY ADDING vinegar to our reef tanks, we are doing it to help the denitrification process. What I am asking is why, if we are ALREADY USING THE STUFF, we don't use it instead of CO2 as the source of acid for our calcium reactor. How can adding vinegar be good unless you take advantage of its acidic property?

 

[chercm]

sorry ....
does adding vinegar cause cyano bacteria ?

 

[Servillius]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15595706#post15595706 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by chercm
sorry ....
does adding vinegar cause cyano bacteria ?

The short answer is probably everyone's favorite... it depends. Under normal circumstances, managed properly, its part of a regimen designed to reduce the nutrients that feed cyanobacter. Under some conditions, if the tank is in poor condition, it may become part of the problem. Not much of an answer really, I think the best advice is to read a lot about vodka dosing before throwing any vinegar into a tank.

 

[oscarsdad608]

How slowly would you be able to add your 2ml of vinegar to keep a constant ph in your calcium reactor. 2ml may lower to ph to the levels you want, but it would not keep them there.

 

[wayne in norway]

I add vinegar to my kalk to dissolve extra in and to help dinatrifcation and that works, and perdonally I don't get cyano blooms. I'm doing this as a short tem fix for a couple of problems (lack of Balling Chems and UltraMinS) and likely won't keep on doing it. But I do not believe that adding some 10 or 15 mils , let alone 2 mills of vinegar to a calcium reactor is going to drop the pH low enough to signifantly dissolve CaCO3.
But you can test this yourself. How much water is in a calcium reactor - guesstimate 500ml. Add 10ml of vinegar and remeasure the pH, and keep on doing that till the pH is <7. Then total up the amount of vinegar, and tell us how much it is (because I don't know, can't be bothered to work it out and you're asking the question) and then decide if you want to add that much vinegar per day, and you'll need to keep on adding because as new water comes in the alk will be renewed and you've got to get all of that buffer out of the way to dissolve the CaCO3

 

[tmz]

Well, I don't think vinegar could be applied to a calcium reactor in lieu of CO2 very efficiently and that's an issue to solve before going further.`I also think the concentration of vinegar in a slow flow pressurized calcium reactor will likely lead to problems in maintaining a steady effluent ph and may lead some to bacterial colonization in the reactor potentialy including sulfate reducing bacteria .

 

[subarcticreef]

What is the concentration of acetic acid in vinegar? In M or %?

 

[HighlandReefer]

typically approximately 5% with vinegar found in the grocery store.