curing homemade rock
- Thread starter stephclay
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will-kib1;933883; said:with portland cement if you dont cure it sepertley it will raise you ph to 14 and kill every thing in your tank take alook on some of the marine forums theres alot of imformation out there on this
OK well 14 might be a BIT of an exaggeration...
will-kib1;933964; said:a ph of 14 is no exaggeration and it takes months to cure not weeks
OK, not to get off topic here, but I would very much like to see a source for that information. Caustic soda will eat your skin, at pH 13.8. I know concrete has limestone in it, but it's not like dumping NaOH in your tank. If that was true, touching damp, unseasoned concrete would give you lesions.
Here is an article about concrete washwater, and uncured (wet-unhardened) concrete, and they say pH 12... so your cured concrete block definitely aint going to produce 14: http://www.concretewashout.com/pages/industry_problems/concrete_washwater/
if you where to encase your foot in concreet the concreet would eat through your skin, and cause lesions... not because of the heat but because of the li thats used in the concreet and the extreemly high ph. the longer the concreet sits the more it cures and the ph levels out, now what i read was that when curing the concreet for tank use to put it in the tank and place in 1.5 times the salt you would need for a marin tank, then run it for a month, do a 100% water change and run for 2 weeks, then drain all the water again and fill with fresh, then run for a week then drain and fill with watever you want, after two months it should be perfectly cured... i read 4-5 writeups that explained a process just like this one... the other didnt shay $h!t... but realy the best way to cure it is soak it in fresh water and change the water daily to clear the high ph...
What i would do is play chemist... check the ph, and add acid, the bi-product will be salt..., and keep adding the acid untill it reads around 6-7 for a ph. then let it sit and change the water...., hydrochloric acid is used to clean aluminum it strond and cheap(viniger will also work to a lesser degree...), you can get it at home depot, but look for it yourself, the staff is useless... WEAR GLASSES AND GLOVES!!! once done although i doubt that the ph is low enough to hurt you...
What i would do is play chemist... check the ph, and add acid, the bi-product will be salt..., and keep adding the acid untill it reads around 6-7 for a ph. then let it sit and change the water...., hydrochloric acid is used to clean aluminum it strond and cheap(viniger will also work to a lesser degree...), you can get it at home depot, but look for it yourself, the staff is useless... WEAR GLASSES AND GLOVES!!! once done although i doubt that the ph is low enough to hurt you...
most of the marine keepers who use potland cement and argonite sand or cockle shell to make base rock for there live rock tanks soak it in fresh water the more water changes you do on it the quicker you will drop the ph i have heard of white vineger being used to speed up the process never done it my self saltwater will be slower than freshwater due to it being more akaline than fresh ther is lots of info out there just at some marine sites and it doesnt matter if ph12 or 14 it will still kill every thing in the tank
Acids will not speed up the curing process, they'll only neutralize the high pH. You need an accelerator (like Calcium Chloride) to make it cure faster, and I'm not sure how those things will affect your fish.
And salt doesn't do anything good or bad for the curing process, so I would just leave it out. The reaction takes place between the compounds in the cement and water. If salt had any benefits, they would have added it to the mix.
You're probably better off just curing it in freshwater for a couple weeks and testing the pH of the water every week after that to see how far it's gone up. When it hovers at around 7.0 you're good to go.
And salt doesn't do anything good or bad for the curing process, so I would just leave it out. The reaction takes place between the compounds in the cement and water. If salt had any benefits, they would have added it to the mix.
You're probably better off just curing it in freshwater for a couple weeks and testing the pH of the water every week after that to see how far it's gone up. When it hovers at around 7.0 you're good to go.
