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PH - Alkalinity & Apex


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  1. #1
    pinhigh1886 - Reefkeeper CR Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    Brighton, MI
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    219
    First Name
    John

    Default PH - Alkalinity & Apex

    So I have been using BRS Dosers for about 3 weeks now and I have been watching. I have graphed PH and the dosing to watch how it effects my system. My PH has stayed pretty consistant going from 8.16 during the day down to 7.98 lowest at night. I also dose at night both Alk and Cal during the night. Alk the first 6 hrs of lights out. and Cal the 2nd 6 hrs of lights out. So everything has been fine until today. I recieved an alarm on my phone from the APEX stating that my PH was below 7.9. I set up this alarm. So I thought (2) things: 1) because of the warmer weather my furnace wasn't going off as much and I may have more CO2 in the house. Thought was that furnace would pull fresh air into house when running more?? or 2) that because I broke the bank at the Swap and bought 4 more acros, rock anemone, acans, clam, etc maybe i was losing Alkalinity at a higher rate??

    So I first had my wife open the window in the basement. Waited 3 hrs and the PH continued to drop down to 7.85. I kept getting the alarm every hour. So from my phone I turned on the Alk doser for 2 minutes. This gave me 2.2ml of Alk dose. Then the PH quickly started to rise right on the graph where the dose was made. It went up to 8.0 over the next hour and is now has been stable there for an hour. I doubt that my PH probe is the problem becuase I just calibrated it 3 weeks ago and it has been so accurate up to this point but because it could be I don't want to dose it again to get PH up to 8.1 or 8.2 un less I run a test kit on it when I get home right?

    My question is could adding this kind of load of corals cause this? Most of the acros were smaller frags and I added them on Sunday. I guess it could take a few days for the system and corals to adjust and start consuming additional Alk?

    Thanks for any oppinions or responses. How cool that my fish tank emailed me at work, I sent it a few commands from my phone, and then watched it on a graph on my computer Control Freak!!

  2. #2
    jimsflies - Reefkeeper
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    Aug 2009
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    Michigan
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    Default

    Diurnal pH swings are normal. They are primarily caused when the lights are turned off causing photosynthesis to stop in your display. It stands to reason, that with more corals in your system the over all rate of photo synthesis is higher when the lights are on and thus you see a bigger change in pH when the lights are off. (pH goes down because of carbonic acid formation due to the excess of CO2 in the system...which is normally processed during photosynthesis by zooxanthellae algae.) Increasing fish load could also cause a lower pH since they are respirating and would increase the amount of CO2 in the water column.

    A well sealed/insulated house could also cause lower pH as you mentioned due to an increase in CO2 concentrations. Although I doubt there is any need to set an alarm for anything more than 7.5 with your apex. Now if you were dosing kalk or had a calcium reactor where you were controlling pH that would be an entirely different situation and I would narrow up the range if you were working on dialing it in.

    Here is a graph of my pH (disregard the irregularities on the 28-29th since I was tearing my tank apart to catch some fish... even when I dosed kalk (I haven't in a long time), my pH would routinely swing between 7.9 and 8.3:

    graphnsphp?probe02&ampperiodmonth&ampmemberjimw - PH - Alkalinity & Apex

    Interestingly, one time I happened to start our gas fireplace on the other side of the basement from my tank. I sat down to look at my tank and happened to see the pH value changing. As I watched for a couple minutes it plummetted...can't recall the lowest value it had. But I realized something was wrong and when I went to the other room could smell that the flue wasn't open on the fireplace. So in extreme situations, it doesn't take long to really impact CO2 levels in our tank water.

    Many people run reverse photo cycles if they have a fuge to offset the photosynthesis of the corals with that off the macro. If you run on the same schedule that could also cause even more of a difference. Also aerating water helps drive off excess CO2 (assuming there is more dissolved in the tank water than in the air). So a skimmer helps with this since it is essentially aerating the water. Baffles in sumps, pumps and discharges through an overflow will all help with driving off excess CO2.

  3. #3
    pinhigh1886 - Reefkeeper CR Member
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    Feb 2012
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    Brighton, MI
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    John

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    Interesting!! Well I do have a Fuge with lots of macro growing. I run the light on my Fuge 24hrs because I use Chelurpa. I also know that the PH swing is normal at night but I thought since I was dosing Alk and Cal that this would be minimal, especially since I dosed at night when the biggest change occured I know that it is a good thing to have minor up and down PH swings as this happens in nature as well like you said but I thought I could keep it between 8.2 and 7.9. Maybe that is a little tight? I have maintained PH in between those ranges for (3) weeks until today. Do you think it would take a few days for new corals to start consumming alk and cal or would it happen right away? Here is my PH and Alk dose graph.
    Attached Images Attached Images  

  4. #4
    jimsflies - Reefkeeper
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    What is your kalk doser program and where is the pH probe relative to the alk addition?

  5. #5
    pinhigh1886 - Reefkeeper CR Member
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    Feb 2012
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    John

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    I am not dosing KALK right? I am using (2) part dosing from BRS, so that is Soda Ash and Calcium Chloride. I am trying to maintain ALK at 8 dKH and Calcium at 480 ppm. This theoretically would put my PH at 8.2-8.3 in a vaccum. I know there are other things that effect PH but this is kind of the range I am looking to achieve and maintain. Here is my program:

    ALK
    Fallback OFF
    Set OFF
    OSC 000:00/001:51/058:09 Then ON
    If Time 02:00 to 19:59 Then OFF
    If pH > 08.30 Then OFF

    I have been staying in the 7.7 - 8.0dKH range dosing 24ml every other day so what you are seeing in my program is that I dose when my lights are off for 12 hours. The first 6 hrs I dose ALK and the second 6 hrs I dose Cal. My dosers are 1.1ml / min. So at 1.51 minutes of dosing at every hour for 6 hrs I get 12.21ml daily. I am dripping right above my return pump in the sump. Every drip gets sucked right in quickly and shoots out into the tank. My PH Probe is in the sump as well but in the chamber before so it wouldn't see the change in ALK level until it cycled through the main tank correct?

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