I recently installed a PH meter, and I noticed that my PH can swing from 8.2 in the morning to 8.6 when the light turns off. Is this too much PH swing? The easier to keep SPS like digitata and stylo are doing well in my tank, but most acroporas don't have very good growth and color.
PH swing too much for SPS?
- Thread starter johnnytmc
- Start date
true...have you checked your alk
danil
New member
a 0.4 unit swing per 24 hours is common. It could be as high as 0.6. Sure it would be nice to have it constant but its not possible in our closed environment. There are few tricks to make it more 'flat'. Take it with care with some bad luck correction to your existing water chemistry can do more harm then good.
If you have sump with macroalgae you can put sump light on reverse cycle with your main light, you can dose your Kalk/Alk at night. These will bump your PH up. For down 'force' you can turn off your skimmer or have some source of CO2 in the water. Calc Reactor will lower your PH. So in theory if you use Kalk at night and CReactor during light period your PH could be flat
Wonder if anyone using this setup!?
If you have sump with macroalgae you can put sump light on reverse cycle with your main light, you can dose your Kalk/Alk at night. These will bump your PH up. For down 'force' you can turn off your skimmer or have some source of CO2 in the water. Calc Reactor will lower your PH. So in theory if you use Kalk at night and CReactor during light period your PH could be flat
Wonder if anyone using this setup!?
dzhuo
Active member
How much your tank swings? pH (in saltwater) is tie to alk and CO2 (nothing else). In other word, you can't change pH without changing one of the 2. A 0.6 swing is double what Randy suggested (his recommandation is 0.3 per 24 hours max). If your tank swings 0.6 every day, it either means you have an alk swing or you have a ridiculously amount of algae (or change in CO2). I wouldn't consider .6 to be common but it might not hurt anything.
My alk is stable at 9-10. I usually test twice a week. I use kalk reactor with ATO, During the hot days, the difference in evaporation rate can be big between day and night. Maybe this is the main contributing factor for the increased swing due to the increased kalk dosage during the day? I suppose I can setup a two-pump ATO, one with fresh water during the lighting period and kalk reactor at night?
curthendrix
New member
Try stirring your kalk reactor mostly at night.
dzhuo
Active member
8.6 will not harm SPS (or most any marine animals). I wouldn't try to correct a "problem" that isn't there. Personally, I feel this is the #1 mistake people make: Trying to "improve" (running extra stuff, dosing extra addictive, changing lights, etc) things that should have been left alone. Every action you take should have a clear objective of what you are trying to achieve. Just because your pH (or swing) is slightly outside of the norm is not a reason to start worry about imaginary problem.
Cantgrowdidly
New member
This is sound advise!
Good point. I will leave my kalk/ATO setup alone since it's keeping my Ca and Alk fairly stable.
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chrishayes
New member
Do you run a controller? If so, thats what I reccomend, putting your kalk on an alarm to keep it from topping off when ph reaches a set point. This is more for the alk swing(if there is one) that come with kalk as top off during different temps through the year. When I used kalk in my ato I expeirienced the samd thing as you except my ph would never get over 8.3 but the swing was from 7.7-.8 so this concerned me a bit. The biggest problem is in the fall/spring where temps are not consistent which makes kalk dose hard to calculate since its not being "metered" but is soley dependant on how much your fans run.
If you have the ability to run kalk and RO seperately with the use of a controller that would be even better since you can meter the two better dependant on need. A problem I had is that I was using kalk directly mixed with my topoff water so when my ph reached my setpoint it would stop topping off. Then once it fell, often late in the night, the amount of evap that had occured would be so much that adding that much kalk at one time was a problem. I ended up setting up a pretty complicated program to get around that.
I finally decided that it was just too complicated and had the potential to do serious damage if one domino fell so I stopped using kalk altogether and let my 2 part dosing pumps add cal and alk. My ph has suffered but I cant say its had any negative impact on my system. I just dont worry about ph anymore and actually stopped displaying it on my head unit so that I dont worry about it. lol
If you have the ability to run kalk and RO seperately with the use of a controller that would be even better since you can meter the two better dependant on need. A problem I had is that I was using kalk directly mixed with my topoff water so when my ph reached my setpoint it would stop topping off. Then once it fell, often late in the night, the amount of evap that had occured would be so much that adding that much kalk at one time was a problem. I ended up setting up a pretty complicated program to get around that.
I finally decided that it was just too complicated and had the potential to do serious damage if one domino fell so I stopped using kalk altogether and let my 2 part dosing pumps add cal and alk. My ph has suffered but I cant say its had any negative impact on my system. I just dont worry about ph anymore and actually stopped displaying it on my head unit so that I dont worry about it. lol
Dog boy Dave
New member
Times three for this advise. Fixes for imaginary problems consume most of the revenue in this hobby.
Im on day 2 with an apex and im pleased to say my swing in the last 24 hrs was .15. Max=8.27 min 8.12. This pleased me, but all I do is dose alk at night and have my fuge light on a reverse cycle. I'm a firm believer in "don't chase your PH, ie hardly ever tested for it, but I do the common practices to keep it stable. In my old system i tried PH buffers, just don't! they SCREW with alk BIG time. I have a 90g display and a 40 breeder sump, maybe 100 gallons total water volume (80-100 lbs rock? bought it dry). mostly LPS just starting to get into SPS.
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