waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
No, all the same stuff, just the shortened term "bicarb" and the various brand names and the different terms used between the countries. I agree with you that for me it has usually seemed pretty quick like you say, I was just being cautious because I'd seen some people in threads reporting that it shot up to a certain point pretty fast but then continued to creep up some over time. As usual I don't think we have any more to go on than our very random and confusion-prone collections of personal observations and thread chat. I do have an overall aversion to getting a lot more bicarb into a fishlessly cycling tank than is necessary to get it into the 8.0 to 8.4 sweet spot just because I wonder what happens to the sodium ultimately and whether some of it might hang around a bit despite the big water changes at the transition point. I mean, overall I think we've all (me included) become pretty satisfied that we can do this and then water change it out and really not see any problems, so it's mostly just idle back of the head thought, which I'm prone to do.. sort of a placeholder for something we might know more about some day if that makes sense.
WD
edit: note that my comment was in response to GVG, before Kate slipped in her post. Kate, long ago I just picked the "2 teaspoons per 50L" amount as a sort of middle starting point for dosing bicarb (based on prior info at various web sites) with the idea that you'd just keep re-adjusting it over a week or two to try and get it in to the 8.0 to 8.4 range that's the peak for bacterial growth according to Hovanec.
WD
edit: note that my comment was in response to GVG, before Kate slipped in her post. Kate, long ago I just picked the "2 teaspoons per 50L" amount as a sort of middle starting point for dosing bicarb (based on prior info at various web sites) with the idea that you'd just keep re-adjusting it over a week or two to try and get it in to the 8.0 to 8.4 range that's the peak for bacterial growth according to Hovanec.
