Peroxide - you guys will think I'm nuts

[Sebae again]

I bought mine from a health food store.

[Proteus]

Hydroponics store carry 30% also

[pinkreef]

Is using the commonly sold 3% stuff the same thing?

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by pinkreef

Is using the commonly sold 3% stuff the same thing?

yes, but I'm not sure I'd put 30% H2O2 directly in a tank, that stuff is crazy reactive. Most accounts I've read of people who use it for whatever purpose dilute it down to 3% before letting it come in contact with water/rocks.

When you do automated particle size analysis in a soils lab you need to digest all the organics in your sample or it messes up the sand/silt/clay distributions. My lab uses 30% peroxide to do it. The reaction is usually strong enough to boil the water in your reaction vessel. If you get it on your skin it instantly turns snow white to a depth of about half a mm, though if you rinse it off right away it will eventually get its normal colour back.

It's very potent stuff. Safer for all involved if it's diluted first. The benefit of 30% is that you get more for your money, and if you ever wanted to make a batch with a higher concentration for something like cleaning a filter sock you could.

[Relect]

The 3% from the drug store usually has a stabilizer added to prolong shelf life once opened. For salmon we use 200 ppm of 35% for prophylactic treatment of fungus with no harm to fish. We dilute and use immediately as once mixed with water the extra oxygen molecule leaves the solution. This also raises D.O. quite a lot.

[Relect]

Oh ya wear gloves and eye protection.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Relect

The 3% from the drug store usually has a stabilizer added to prolong shelf life once opened. For salmon we use 200 ppm of 35% for prophylactic treatment of fungus with no harm to fish. We dilute and use immediately as once mixed with water the extra oxygen molecule leaves the solution. This also raises D.O. quite a lot.

Don't they have to add stabilizers to the 35% stuff as well? I thought H2O2 without a stabilizer present decomposes rapidly regardless of the concentration?

My bottle says the stabilizers are:
Sodium stannate
Sodium nitrate
Sodium pyrophosphate
Methylenephosphonic acid
Phosphoric acid

4 out of 5 of those would basically just add small amounts of nitrate and phosphorous to the water. Each of the phosphorous containing compounds should be bio-available, though I don't think the methylenephosphonic acid would register on the test kits we use as it's an organic compound. The bottle doesn't say what concentrations of each are in it, but assuming you've got functioning nutrient export systems in place and you're dosing relatively small amounts I doubt you'd be inadvertently adding to your problem

The one that concerns me is sodium stannate, as that has tin in it. I found this article in reef keeping that only briefly talks about tin: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-0...ture/index.php

The basic gist is that no one knows anything about tin or its role in marine ecosystems, but that tin concentrations in aquarium are already 200,000 times higher than natural sea water.

So that's definitely something to think about. Now that I've read this I think I'd be a little more comfortable with dosing peroxide if I could find a brand that did not have sodium stannate as a stabilizer, but I don't know if such a thing exists or not?

[Relect]

Ours doesn't list the stabilizers used anywhere on the label or msds but it does say it is approved for aquaculture by health canada.