Water chemistry affected by cooking?

[RomoFL]

So I tried to search this and maybe I’m not using the correct terms, but I’m trying find out if cooking will affect water chemistry? Specifically cooking oily stuff like frying on a stove top. Both of my tanks are rimless without covers and both are relatively close to the kitchen - and the floor plan is an open design. Am I negatively affecting my water?

 

[Veetz89]

Just my own experience. 1 year uptime, tank is near the kitchen, I cook frequently. Triton results dont show anything abnormal, if anything it was all in the green, and I only ran carbon 24/7 as a precaution.

 

[Sarah24!]

Hello,

I have had no issues with cooking, however lol if you let something burn like in the oven and open the door with smoke coming out, that will absolutely affect your tank for a short period (till smoke clears so maybe hour or two after). I was making a pizza and didn’t realize one of the cooking pans had grease from when I broiled something. Well the pizza wasn’t burnt but the grease was burning off and was smoking pretty bad. So had to turn on ceiling fans and stove fan etc. which by doing that kinda made it worse because my tank is not rimless but it’s open on top. But most of my fish hid and all of my corals retracted their polyps. This has happened a few times and it’s always with smoke. So in short lol I’d you cook don’t burn anything

 

[RomoFL]

Haha thanks! I’m glad both of you had no I’ll effects. The bigger tank is just getting going and we pan fried some chicken parm last night so it got me wondering. The little tank is a roller coaster in itself so I wouldn’t have a clue if anything negative was directly caused by the oil vapors.

 

[W1ngz]

If you do burn something, shut off your skimmer for a little while until things clear up. It's actively pulling air (and everything in the air) and blending it with the water. An open top won't have much effect compared to that.

 

[RomoFL]

Very good point!

 

[iDeath]

Didn't think about the skimmer either. I've had this happen a few times... when we burned a few things in the oven. Corals were very upset...

Good advice!

 

[rkpetersen]

Another consideration. Heavy use of a gas stovetop, like boiling a pot of pasta on one and cooking or frying something on another, can generate a huge amount of CO2, easily enough to raise the CO2 level in the ambient air, particularly if your house is closed up. Excess CO2 can cause your pH to drop. I have a CO2 monitor by one tank that’s near the kitchen, and it raises the alarm when we make spaghetti. Level can rise to almost twice baseline.

 

[RomoFL]

Very good consideration for those with a gas stove. Luckily mine is electric.. thanks for sharing!