A few comments: if you decide to make the plaster-of-paris pills or tablets be sure that you are buying POP that is made with calcium carbonate. Some versions of POP are made from silicates, won't dissolve worth a hoot and will have no impact on your buffering, pH and little on your calcium concentrations. How to know? A. Check the ingredients if listed. B. Use a small vial of vinegar and place a drop or two on a little bit of the POP...if it fizzes then it has carbonates in it. The DAP stands for the company that makes the POP and is not some weird acronym for it's contents. Sodium bicarbonate is used by many to adjust pH and more importantly, alkalinity, commonly referred to as KH. The strips used for testing, as Sandy has mentioned, tend to be inaccurate and have a bigger problem in that their shelf-life is rather limited compared to the liquid test kits. I've benchmarked both against the gold-standard titrimetric method in a lab and found the liquid ones to be more accurate. The primary advantage of sodium bicarbonate is that it is one of those chemicals that relatively benign in terms of potential problems of putting in too much....once your water pH is at 8.3-8.4 whether you dump in a cup or 10 cups will have no further impact on pH although it will increase the alkalinity. This is NOT true for pH PLUS from swimming pool stores. This product is typically sodium carbonate, not sodium bicarbonate. As you add this stuff and happen to over dose you WILL raise your pH. In fact, it is possible to raise the pH as high as 11 by adding just sodium carbonate...you can use it but be careful. Same goes for using muriatic acid...it can be diluted and used as need be but I think you would be far better off leaving the pH at a stable level rather than trying to chase it around. You will probably find that your pH will vary significantly during the day...low in the morning, higher in the afternoon...just due to the influence of algae in your pond. Bring the algae under better control, plus keep your alkalinity levels above 80 mg/L and you'll have less fluctuation in your pH. You'll probably find that many folks...here in this forum or elsewhere...routinely keep their ponds in the pH range of 8.3 - 8.8 with no major effects on fish, plants, tadpoles, birds, etc. Not true if you're trying to grow fish that enjoy a more acid pH (some African types, if I recall correctly) or plants that are very pH sensitive...I believe there are some native orchid species that may fall into this category, for example. I used to make the POP tabs but kept running into more frequent problems of locating manufacturers whose products which contained carbonate-versions. Now all I do is throw in a handful or two of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) once in awhile. Specially add it in the late fall headed into cold weather when things begin to freeze ... want everything well buffered at that point. Hope all this stuff helps. ---David

It's unfortunate that luches has driven away many long term members, I can certainly understand why though. And from the first forum I know him from, that's his goal their as well (at least the ones that don't agree). He want's to drive away all the strong opposition, silence any remaining members from speaking out (such as what you say he has done with you), and the ones that are defiant (like me) he tries to turn the forum upside down with to keep control of what he thinks is his. Because like a abnormally jealous boy/girl friend, his mentality is "if I cant have them, then nobody can." So he tries to ruin the forum in order to get the others to try to get luches opposition to become submissive (for fear of ruining more threads), that way he can retain control of his subjects. They don't realize the threads, and entire forum is ruined anyway when people are not allowed to freely share their ideas and opinions. I'm mot talking about speaking up for yourself, getting tired, and going away. That's pointless and has no good long term effects. All that does is for the people who are left, feel they just have no choice but put up with it, or just leave. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT LUCHES WANTS. That way he continues to control what's said in the forum. But had your long term members stuck it out and defended their rights of free speech, I have no doubt that the forum would be a much better place now and/or in the future. I respect your opinion grizz, although I completely disagree with it. That is, your thinking that bickering threads is worse than a forum where people are not allowed to have different ideas and opinions than luches, and be able to freely express them. That's why your long term members left, they didn't want to fight every time they spoke. That how luches got rid of the opposition. As I said before, a forum where your not allowed to have different opinions is a USELESS FORUM. You cant make a forum any worse than useless. Your long term members realize the forum was becoming useless, so they left. What they didn't realize was that they could have turned it around (likely by now) if they had continued defending their forum, and right of free speech (without being disrespected for it). Them giving up was the result of short term thinking, and that's unfortunate. I know this is the world wide web, but I grew up in the U.S.A., and here we have the right of free speech (within reason). I don't claim to be perfect, but I try to treat others with common courtesy and respect. In return I expect the same back. I don't think that's to hard to do, or to much to expect, plain and simple. I don't expect anybody to stand up for me, but I will stand up for myself. Even if nobody else wants to stand up for their self.

My last post about the plaster of paris is not some kind of hooey that I invented. When I was a kid way back in the 1960's all of the pet shops and variety stores, that sold fish keeping supplies, sold a product made of plaster of paris to keep in your fishbowl. They were called various names, like Water Conditioner, Molly Blocks,etc.. Some were called Weekend Feeders, with little pieces of fishfood in them. They were mostly molded like little seashells to be decorative. The main thing they did was buffer the ph of the water/ raise the alkalinity of the water. I never understood what they really did for the water until years later when I started keeping salt water and african rift lake fish. They all require high and stable pH water, and it was maintained by using alkaline gravel in the tanks (kind of like adding lime to your garden soil). This only seemed to work if you did a lot of water changes, which are still very important, but I remembered those little blocks of POP and made one for my aquarium. Suddenly the pH was very stable, and I have used them ever since.These work so well because the POP is less stable in water(disolves faster than the gravel). My freinds that have pet shops use them in the filter vats on their systems to. Garbird

Wow! Thank you for your generosity and interesting discussion. (1) My fridge is a ABB2227. The manual does not say anything about the "normal" variation. "If the fridge is too warm, set the control down; if it is too cold, set it up"... Dah... (2) I typed my model number on the Web. I did not know there was a Amana community that has as a hobby the periodic thawing of our fridge... how fun... (3) A precision: I remove from my readings all the meal time since my vegetables and nuts are in there (the service guy told me that a fridge cannot hold a normal temperature if it is empty). No kids in the house to screw up my readings. My readings' variations cannot be explained by the door opening. This I am sure. (4) The board and sensor were changed when the fridge once again went up over 50 degrees last week. I got fed up and instead of doing the thawing routine all over again, I called the service guy. This is where our opinions go into different directions; he says that my fridge is now normal, but I think that something is still wrong because of the large temperature variation (but one good thing though, the temperature never went back to 50 degrees with the new board; the problem is that I don't have anymore the readings before the last problematic episode... this is where I kick myself; I should have kept them). Since the new board, the highest reading I got is around 45 degrees. (5) Tonight I opened the door and put an instant 3-sec thermometer in everything liquid that had spent a couple of days in the fridge and was not in the door (yes I also have one of those... I know; I may sound like a crazy thermometer woman by now...). The cup of water I put in yesterday night, the water the radishes were in, the 1-liter of milk, the water the celery was in... were all showing 40 degree readings. (6) I went through the study that was linked to. Very informative. They seem to think that 5 degrees is an acceptable upper limit and 5 C is 41 F. So maybe my stuff showing 40 degrees is all right despite the very large air temp variation. (I will go on and calculate my average and median over several days... I think that the median is more telling than the average... my stat husband reminded me that on average everybody is normal...). Where do I go from here: - Tonight before going to bed, I will put the control to 5 to see the impact it will impact. (I am just a bit afraid it will freeze my tender vegetables; I have periodic readings between 31 and 32 F, so I hope that it will get the upper limit down, but not the lower limit). - Since there is nothing in the manual, tomorrow I will call Amana and ask them what they consider a normal variation (but I have to admit that my hopes for a meaningful answer are not high). - In the next weeks (we do not live in the same city), I will go to my sister's home and test her "perfectly functioning" fridge, just to see if she has the same variation as I now have. It may just show that this fridge has never been able to keep a stable temperature. Thanks again, Lynn This post was edited by l_mtl on Wed, Jun 25, 14 at 22:05