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WQ Playground

This WQ Playground helps reinforce how sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) either increases pH, decreases pH, or even has no effect on your culture water's pH.

If you're not familiar with the visual approach to aquaculture WQ management and training used here, you'll find a short interactive "scrollytelling" intro at the WQ Viz website.

Quick-start

The three screencasts below show you what to do.

Expected: Bicarb raises pH

  1. Drag the target waypoint at pH 6.00 to simulate adding bicarb
  2. The amount of bicarb added is displayed in kg and pounds
  3. Note that adding NaHCO3 RAISES the pH above 6.00
Bicarb-pH gif

Surprising: Bicarb lowers pH

  1. Tap the pH 9.00 checkbox
  2. Again drag the pH 6.00 target waypoint
  3. Observe the pH 9.00 target waypoint
  4. Note that adding NaHCO3 LOWERS the pH below 9.00
Bicarb-pH gif

Confusing: Bicarb has little or no effect on pH

  1. Tap the pH 7.68 checkbox
  2. Again drag the pH 6.00 target waypoint
  3. Observe the pH 7.68 target waypoint
  4. Note that adding NaHCO3 DOES NOT CHANGE pH
Bicarb-pH gif

OK. Your turn...

This visual approach explains some of the trickier parts of aquaculture water quality without pages of equations.

It's also a useful management tool. Here, it displays quantitative info that relates the amount of bicarb added to pH and alkalinity.

(We'll see in other posts how it also provides information on dissolved CO2, un-ionized ammonia-nitrogen, aragonite saturation, and other key WQ management properties.)

For this post, just keep in mind the major take-away:

Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) doesn't always raise pH.
Under typical aquaculture conditions, alone, it barely raises pH at all.


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