Application

The heavy soluble calcium carbonate contained in the mixture, dissolves itself by using CO₂ to convert itsself into the form of soluble calcium hydrogencarbonate (that when it dries decomposes again into CO₂ and calcium carbonate, and that is why it cannot be filled directly into bottles). The more available free CO₂ that is provided, as well as the lower that the pH-value is, the faster that this process can progress.

By pH 6.0 this process can complete in a matter of minutes, especially when a controlled CO₂ system is in operation, but if the pH-value is a little under the neutral point and when relatively low CO₂ is present in the water, the process can however then take a some hours.

The short lived water “clouding” is in no manner damaging for fish or plants.

One can also dissolve Duradrakon through strong water circulation in an external water preparation container before performing the exchanging water.

When neither the first nor the other method is practically possible then it is however also possible to apply the very easily soluble Duradrakon M with its 2 components, though there is a slightly increased complete-salt content.

Features

The features and the composition of Duradrakon are the result of the demands that were defined to produce an ideal hardening-salt mixture:

• The standard-ion relationship should be approximately established.
• The supply of all necessary trace elements (also from those, where one is (still) not completely sure of) should be secured (use of NaCl-free sea salt as a mixture component).
• The use of acids (lemon acid or strong hydrogensulfate acid) in the salt-mixture should be avoided! Through this trick one can immediately dissolve completely and also obtain the normally heavily soluble carbonates, but the lemon acid is at the end bacterially, in the pool completely used up (admittedly amongst oxygen consumption) under restoration of the hydrogen carbonate buffer. The usage of hydrogensulphate would lead to a movement of the ion-spectrum and to an unnecessary salt increase. In my opinion the choice of this path is not necessary and leads only to an avoidable increase of the bacteria count in the aquarium and an un-controllable rise in the pH-value.