Where can I get liquid NaOH

[texman]

There was recently a thread on destroying aptasia using highly concentrated sodium hydroxide. I have been trying for the past several days to find someone that sells and ships this product. Anyone ever use it, and if so, where did you get it?

 

[gerdesm]

You need to find someone who works in a lab
I have given it to some people as pellets, which is how it is normally sold by chemical suppliers. It is pretty caustic, so probably needs special shipping conditions. Not sure where to get it as a common item- or in liquid form. I have also used HCl- which in a lot of ways is easier and less messy. The small amount used to nuke aptasia will not shift pH to any significant degree. Lately I have been "feeding" the aptasia kalk paste, and to be honest, this seems to work the best in my hands.

Michael

 

[leftovers]

or to make your life simple just mix red devil lye and water and inject or if you object to placing such a strong base in your tank use kalk paste and smear over the top of any offending corals/polyps to kill them. This will kill any aptaisia or mushroom.

 

[O P Ing]

hi.
NaOH is a solid in room temperature. common name for the chemical is lye, as leftovers says. If you can't get the ACS technical grade NaOH, or NaOH solution (premixed solution is always more expensive), how about just use kalkwasser? The common name for kalkwasser is prickling lime, and it is safer for your tank than lye (won't upset your sodium like lye does, but I guess you are using a little so don't matter much...).

 

[MattM]

We've used 2M NaOH on Aiptasia after reading about it here. We ordered it from Alfa-Aesar (http://www.alfa.com/alf/index.htm).

To be honest, concentrated kalkwasser works better.

 

[texman]

Maybe I will try kalk paste topically first. I did try injecting kalk once, however the result was that 1 large aptasia seemed to turn into about 15 small ones within a week or so.