Experiment in ph

brettinteriors

brettinteriors

New member
I finished hooking up my reef keeper elite last week and I have been able to track and graph my ph. I am testing to see if having a fuge light on 24/7 or reverse cycle is more beneficial I will post results based on two three day cycles.
So far with it on 24/7 there is a dip of about .03 .05 ph in the night. My temp is very steady and I have an automatic doser for Alk so it should be accurate.
 
Skimmer malfunctioned at 4:45 am so I turned it off. I could see a mesurable drop in ph from the skimmer not running. Skimmer on vs of was .07 difference. Ph started dipping at 4:45 and started to go up as soon as I turned the skimmer back on.
 
So far I have not found any difference between an alternating light cycle and 24/7. Note that a larger sump/ fuge with a more powerful light could have a different result and I suspect a very large fuge with a ton of macro and powerful lights would. I use a clamp light with a single cfl. My sump/fuge is only about 15% of my total water volume. My peak ph is about 8:30 pm and is at the same level on both cycles. My trough is in the morning right before my main lights come on, again at the same level. Rate of ph decline and incline are the same. The biggest determining factor thus far has been the skimmer. This makes sense as it aids in gas exchange keeping my co2 levels down and my o2 levels up.


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nice ph0ne signature haha

thanx for posting this. i have my sump on an 18-on/6-off because i want more macro growth, but the only reason i wasn't doing 24 is the pH problem/myth you've apparently set to busting. maybe i can help?

i got the RK Lite (i'm no Elitist... ;) ) dialed-in about 6 weeks ago so i've got a pretty good idea how my pH behaves too... i can see if/how it is affected by switching to 24 hours on in the sump after some 5+ months of 18/6... the sump lights are on as i type this. i will leave them on and post back in a few days...

currently, pH is lowest right before lights-on, at 7.98-8.05, and it plateaus at about 8.13-8.18 in the early-mid afternoon. i also run a skimmer, which definitely does help oxygenate the water, but i was considering starting to run that only 12 hours a day. i am not so sure i will do that now... i have a bubbler in the first chamber of my sump but i have not noticed any repeatable difference in my pH with aeration as yet; i think my house is just very poorly sealed (dog door...) so there's not too much of a ventilation issue. hard to know though... so many variables!

i am running two-part as well, sodium carbonate solution at night (~55mL over the course of four hours) and calcium chloride solution during the day (same volume but in two big doses instead of five small ones like the alkalinity). i definitely rely on this dosing schedule more than aeration to keep my pH where it is... without it my pH falls to 7.8 overnight and barely rises during the day. really though, if i keep the doses constant it shouldn't change whether or not the sump lighting has an observable effect on my pH trend.

is your pH probe in the sump or the display? what is your Alk schedule? do you dose Ca2+ at all? what is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen sparrow?

:D
 
Your ph runs about .15 higher than mine(jealous ;) ). I rarely get into the 8's. I run 2 part brs recipe 1 ( sodium carbonate). My dosing schedule is on a 24 hour cycle , 27 ml of Alk /12 doses, calcium is 65 ml / 12, vinegar 60ml /20. Reading your results I am thinking about changing to a 12 hour. I will have to see if my doser allows this per channel or if it is the same runtime for all. Optimally vinegar in the day, alk at night. My ph probe is on the return side of the sump. I found the skimmer side to come up way too low I am thinking due to bubbles. I need to check if my ph probe is long enough to make it to my tank, I would wonder if the flow and potential bubbles skew my measurements.

What do you keep your Alk at? I keep mine on the low side 7.89-8.05. I have considered raising it .5 Dkh.
I know ph fluctuation is "bad", but so few people have the ability to log their ph I have found little on what amount of ph fluctuation is normal and when it is too much. My eyes are my best instrument. Just fun to really figure out. I too have heard that ventilation can have an effect, my tank is in a very open area and has air access to about 4k feet.

Update: doing some randy Holmes reading sounds like fluctuation in the .1-.3 range is ideal.
 
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I've also tested this but my fuge chamber has very little effect and I've never really been able to grow Chaeto. My Ph goes from about 8.2 during the day to 7.95 at its lowest.
 
Epsiode V: Return of the Randy

Epsiode V: Return of the Randy

brettinteriors said:
Your ph runs about .15 higher than mine(jealous ;) ). I rarely get into the 8's. I run 2 part brs recipe 1 ( sodium carbonate). My dosing schedule is on a 24 hour cycle , 27 ml of Alk /12 doses, calcium is 65 ml / 12, vinegar 60ml /20. Reading your results I am thinking about changing to a 12 hour. I will have to see if my doser allows this per channel or if it is the same runtime for all. Optimally vinegar in the day, alk at night. My ph probe is on the return side of the sump. I found the skimmer side to come up way too low I am thinking due to bubbles. I need to check if my ph probe is long enough to make it to my tank, I would wonder if the flow and potential bubbles skew my measurements.

What do you keep your Alk at? I keep mine on the low side 7.89-8.05. I have considered raising it .5 Dkh.
I know ph fluctuation is "bad", but so few people have the ability to log their ph I have found little on what amount of ph fluctuation is normal and when it is too much. My eyes are my best instrument. Just fun to really figure out. I too have heard that ventilation can have an effect, my tank is in a very open area and has air access to about 4k feet.

Update: doing some randy Holmes reading sounds like fluctuation in the .1-.3 range is ideal.
Click to expand...

:dance: man, your tank is in a ballroom! just pre-planning space for the future DT, right? hehheh...

+1, a slight (and regular) pH fluctuation is normal and shows that your bacteria are alive and well. At least,that's one way to understand it...

I like to keep my dKH between 9.0 and 9.5... I also use the BRS recipe 1, but approximately equal volumes of Ca and Alk. If the RKL can do timer repeats with designated "off" times between them then I'm sure the RKE can too, but they're admittedly pretty tricky to set. My buddy has one and I house sat for him, and I couldn't get his RKE to put the skimmer on standby so I could clean it. But there has to be a way...

I've posted (pasted?) this link before, but it has some good tips you might be interested in, if you haven't already come across it: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/5/chemistry


edit: forgot to mention: so far I haven't noticed any real difference in pH with my sump lights on 24hrs... but it has also only been what, maybe 60 hours? I'll keep checking in.
 
I set my doser for opposite cycle times, vinegar and calcium during the day, alk at night.

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well, i dunno about you guys, but my pH has been pretty low these last few days. i am switching my sump back to a 12-on/12-off cycle, at least for now. once pH normalizes again i will see what effect running the skimmer only twelve hours at a time has.

it has been as low as ~7.85 in the mornings and currently (almost 9PM = lights off...) it is only 7.98, give or take about 0.03. Generally it would be about 8.13 right now.

interestingly brett, since you asked what level i keep my alkalinity, it tested lower than usual yesterday (about 8.5dKH) which isn't bad per se but it was unexpected. i am not sure if it is a result of the sump light experiment or my system still getting equilibrated with the daily dosing (ReefKeeper has only been going for about two months now). i will track it over the next few days to see if perhaps i am not dosing enough.
 
That is where my ph runs. I have been In Vegas this week and before I left I bumped my Alk up 1ml a day. Curious to see if a slightly elevated Dkh will raise he ph. I have read that most tankes run in the high sevens. Although, I will not go past the low 8's Dkh due to carbon dosing. Being gone may also raise the o2 levels and effect ph.
 
Got back from my trip. My addition of a large purple stylo must have really been sucking down carbonate. My dkh dropped to 7.1 from 8!. My ph was actually higher during the trip. Not sure if it from us being gone or my sump area doors being open. I am not sure if this is dkh related but my rbta decided to move, albeit to a better place and one tip of my other stylo bleached. Stylo most likely damaged when I added a second stylo.

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Sorry it has been so long since I posted; my tank sprang a leak on July 17th and I had to scramble to fix it. Still haven't posted about my rescue build/overhaul, but I will soon. I need to finish uploading the pictures.

The new system has been up and running (fully) since July 24th. It is a 125 gallon, and in addition to my old 40g sump, I added a 45g dedicated refugium and put my skimmer back inside the sump. My pH probe sits in penultimate chamber of the sump, after the refugium and skimmer returns and before the bubble trap and display return. My dosers dose in the display return chamber.

I traded some of my overgrown softies in for a few nice little SPS colonies, and the total water volume has increased to about 200 gallons, so to keep my alkalinity around 9.5 dKH I now dose ~111ml SMT/ThF and 88ml Wed/Sat, both in 11ml/30min increments.

I have also set the refugium lights back to 18-on/6-off and my pH goes from 7.96 to 8.06 daily. So far the highest I have seen is 8.08, and the lowest is 7.92. I am hoping that I can keep it in that range...

Since my calcium has been really high (new sand, new water, was already pretty high...), I haven't started dosing it in the new tank yet, but it is finally down to about 480ppm so I will probably start dosing that again this week sometime, after it drops a bit more. In my last tank, calcium never went above or below 520ppm for some reason, whether I dosed or not. In this tank, it started at about 580ppm and has worked its way down over the last seven weeks. I am actually seeing ridiculous amounts of coral growth in the new system too, which given the supporting evidence I think means I may have finally found that mythical magnesium sweet spot. :wildone:

I'm curious to see what Ca dose I should do to maintain that sweet spot. I think I will try setting it to 55ml per day and see if that raises it noticeably or if it keeps dropping.

Brett, you were saying that you raised your alk dose only 1ml and it was still dropping: I think that sounds about right. I have to raise it in 10-11ml increments to notice anything. I have also found that it is possible to add the alk solution too slowly, almost as if the carbonate gets consumed before it can build up any base level. Granted, this was in a new tank I helped a friend set up, but in that situation we had to dose extra to begin with, until the alkalinity got up to about 10.5-11 dKH, and then bring the dose down and let the tank equilibrate. It took a lot of data points to figure out: it's not like there's a universally-applicable tank-dosing formula that can take into account all the variables.

How are things in your neck of the woods?
 
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Hello all,

Thought I would chime in here as pH has been my Achilles' heel since I got back into the hobby. Our current tank (180 gallon) has been up and running since 19 March and since then pH has driven me nuts. It would drop into the high 7.7 range at night and then up into the low 7.9 range during the day. I've built a CO2 scrubber based upon soda lime (works well but you'll go poor buying soda lime), isolated my air intake into the skimmer, increase airflow in the cabinet, increased airflow across the water surface, and dosed Kalk. I now run a Calc reactor so the Kalk dosing is something I stopped but may return to a little bit for the overnight period, we'll see. I have found my home is very sealed so I've addressed that below.

I run Neptune System's Apex controller and monitor pH, ORP, Conductivity and Temp.

The single biggest improvement I have found was running a dedicated airline to pull outside air into my skimmer. This instantly increased my pH by about .15+. This alone put me in the low 7.9 range at night and now my daytime reaches 8.05ish.

The next thing I've done is to pull fresh air into the house in the mornings when it's cool out. We live in Sierra Vista so our mornings are cooler than Tucson so I have that luxury. Having the front door open with a box fan pulling in air with a couple of other windows open I'll see an additional increase by .3-.8. By the time my wife heads to work and closes up everything, the house gets a good "flush" of fresh air.

I'm still not 100% happy, but everything in the tank appears to be thriving and growing significantly. Getting my Calc reactor stabilized was another significant improvement in everything's happiness.

RB
 
That's about where I run. Everything is happy in my tank. I stopped worrying about ph all together.

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I am starting to wonder if it is a Tucson thing...

I used to struggle keeping my PH about 7.9 and that was with the fuge light running 24 hours. Even fresh saltwater would have low PH.

I purchased the K2 Kalk Stirrer from Avast Marine and have been dosing Kalk with my auto top-off. My PH is consistently above 8.0 now.
 
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