Ph problem..help! :-)

[Sohal Tang Tim]

Hellow Everyone...

my 11 week old 160 gallon reef is showing a ph of only 7.3 right now.
I had used a buffer and brought it up to 7.9 the other day but it went down to 7.8 all day today and now lights out she is down to 7.3...
I thought Kalkwasser would be the answer but then I realized I cannot use it until the parameters are where they need to be as it will MAINTAIN NOT FIX

I have heard about opening windows and will be trying that....but we have central air so cannot leave those open for long....

I have heard about running a line from skimmer and I may do that but am hoping that I dont have to do that as it effects performance of the skimmer

I have changed about 80 gallons of water in the past 3-4 days...so that dog wont hunt...

Any other suggestions? I think in the old days we used to use a REEF BUILDER or some darn thing.... I used a buffer the other day and it shot my alkalinity up to 11.8 so I dont want to do thattttt again....it is now down to 10.3 today but so is the ph down..not great...

ANY IDEAS would be appreciated, input...thanks everyone! I am stumped!

 

[Timfish]

Just as an experiment set an air pump outside and run an airline inside to bubble in your system. Monitor the pH for a hourly for a few hours to see what how it changes. An alternate experiment would be to take a bucket of aquarium water, set it outside with an air pump bubbling in it. If pH increases try just using the air pump from the room your tank sits in to bubble in your sump to see if that helps. You might also get the CO2 in your house tested to see if the problem is not enough air exchange with outside air.