Professor Iglofski
Oh, I'm not a scientist
Ok I am encountering a strange response when using potassium bicarbonate for pH up that I hope you hydro guys can maybe help me understand.
My water is from a very small municipality that sources it from a mountain stream. It has a TDS of under 100ppm (my meter doesn't read lower than 100). The pH comes out at 7.2 but its highly sensitive. I have been getting run-off which is lower than I want so I started adding a little pH up to help stabilize the pH, and its been working. However I get weird readings when adding the pH up to the tap water, everything goes funky, so I have been keeping adjustments really small and relying on reading run-off to measure results.
The pH of the tap water is reading 7.2, I add some pH up and the pH drops to 6.5 or so and then slowly climbs over a period of about 15 minutes to eventually read higher than the initial reading. Now it gets really weird, if I again measure the unadulterated tap water its pH now reads 9 or 9.5, and will continue to read the fresh tap water high until its soaked for 15-30 minutes or is put in some calibrations solution. When put in the calibration solution it jumps to the correct reading within about 10 seconds, so the pen is working good. I don't know chemistry too well, so I don't have a clue what exactly is happening. Hoping someone might have an idea.
My water is from a very small municipality that sources it from a mountain stream. It has a TDS of under 100ppm (my meter doesn't read lower than 100). The pH comes out at 7.2 but its highly sensitive. I have been getting run-off which is lower than I want so I started adding a little pH up to help stabilize the pH, and its been working. However I get weird readings when adding the pH up to the tap water, everything goes funky, so I have been keeping adjustments really small and relying on reading run-off to measure results.
The pH of the tap water is reading 7.2, I add some pH up and the pH drops to 6.5 or so and then slowly climbs over a period of about 15 minutes to eventually read higher than the initial reading. Now it gets really weird, if I again measure the unadulterated tap water its pH now reads 9 or 9.5, and will continue to read the fresh tap water high until its soaked for 15-30 minutes or is put in some calibrations solution. When put in the calibration solution it jumps to the correct reading within about 10 seconds, so the pen is working good. I don't know chemistry too well, so I don't have a clue what exactly is happening. Hoping someone might have an idea.