Seajackalope
New member
So I'm having issues keeping my pH in the dt while running my calcium reactor. I'm new to this and am looking for some direction... And sort of regretting not just dosing 2 part. It have an mrc dual chamber calcium reactor fed out of my sump with a sicce pump. The recirculating pump on the reactor is the blueline 20. It's a relatively new tank... 6 months old. Mixed reef with small sps frags some larger LPS and a few softies. The tank is a 300 gallon marineland deep dimension with an eshopps r300 sump under it. I'm using an apex to control the solenoid and am keeping the pH in the reactor between 6.65 and 6.72 with reborn media inside the reactor. The effluent is a little more than a drop a second. About 75 drops per minute. The effluent is going into my fuse with chaeto in it and it have an air stone setup directly under where the effluent is dropping in. I'm using kalkwasser in my ato and am up to 5 tablespoons per 5 gallons of Rodi water. As it have been slowly raising the level of kalkwasser it hasn't really made a difference in the pH in the dt. I'm sometimes get up to 8 pH in the dt at the end of the light cycle usually more like 7.95. By the morning it's back down to 7.75. I'm feel like the needle valve for my co2 regulator isn't working properly as it can't seem to get a consistent bubble rate of about one per second. When the solenoid kicks on it drops the pH in the reactor to 6.65 pretty quickly. When using the fine adjustment needle valve is seem to either get lots of co2... Then a slight turn and it's shut and no co2 comes out. The tank is doing pretty well and I'm starting to see some slow growth from my corals now that is have my nitrates under control. I'm holding my parameters other the the pH pretty well. Ammonia nitrites and nitrates are 0 now. Phosphate is 0.1 and it have basically no nuisance algae growth. Starting to see some coraline take hold but very minimal at this point. I had an ich outbreak and got all of the fish out of the tank save one melanaris wrasse that refused to leave. The thing that seems very odd to me is that the kalkwasser really isn't bumping up the pH and I'm worried about going much higher than what I'm currently doing. I've read a lot about don't worry as long as it's over 7.8...thta being said it feel like I'm adding tons of kalkwasser to keep it barely manageable. My Dkh is 9.8 calcium is at 430 and mag is at 1350. Any suggestions deal would be greatly appreciated. If was thinking of using the apex to turn off the co2 until the dt pH Gets to 8.1 of so but am worried that it won't be able to keep the big 3 consistent if it do that especially as the stonies are starting to grow and I'd imagine my reactor won't keep up with demand if it do that. Also would running a kalkwasser reactor in between the ato and the sump have much of an impact? Flow in my tank is high. 3 mp 40s one jabeo r 8 and an open top with a lot of surface agitation.
