Who makes there own 2 part and who uses store bought. I am wanting to start dosing and am teying to figure out what way to go. Daily dosing by hand or setup a doser
I have tried a few different routes. I originally used Brightwell Aquatics Nano A and Nano B. This worked really well but got expensive. Then I purchased pre mixed solution from Aquatic Art. This took a while to dial in the amount I needed to use but worked pretty well for the most part. I ran out of calcium and magnesium when AA was closed so stopped at another store and tried fritz Calcium Cholride, and Magnesium Cholride. It worked but wasn't great. Tough to get the solution to dilute properly and tough to dial in the amount required too. A couple months ago I switched to BRS. So far I really like it. Easy to mix up the solution, cheap, and they have a calculator to make figuring out how much you need to use easy. I hand dose for now but will be getting a dosed at some point because I would like smaller amounts dosed over the day instead of all at once.
I mixed my own. I baked 2.5 cups of baking soda at 300 degrees for an hour and diluted in one gallon of warm RO water.
I bought some Morton Safe-T Ice Melt from Amazon. It was 20 dollars for 9 pounds and diluted 2 cups in a gallon of RO water. This is pure calcium chloride.
I bought a half gallon of brightwell magnesium. If it were winter I woukd have found some Mag Chloride, but that isn't as easy to come by in the summer.
All of this came from the Randy's Two Part recipes that BrianH introduced me to.
I use ESV 2 part, I think I bought 2x 1 gal. jugs on Amazon for around $40. Seems like it has been a good product. I looked at it as a more foolproof system than BRS's chemicals. This ESV stuff comes as a liquid concentrate that all you need to do is dilute with RODI. For Magnesium, I bought a 2 pound bucket of Fritz Mag Chloride. It works great, but isn't any different than the mag-chloride sold as "snow melt" but that is hard to find in the summer.
Isnt Arm and Hammer washing soda just baking soda that has had all the moisture baked out of it? If so its like 3 bucks from walmart and would save you from having to bake it in the oven.
When you bake the baking soda it's not for moisture you're getting rid of co2 changing ph of it. So it will have less co2 therefore be more alkaline (if I remember my chemistry correctly)