pH - Thought I'd Share This

[griss]

My tank is located in our partially finished basement which has builder grade (read crappy) windows. The exterior walls are currently unfinished but we have some interior wall setup to create "rooms." The basement also only has one HVAC vent to heat/cool it. As a result, in the winters it would get really cold in the basement. So, years ago, I used plastic window sheeting and double stick tape to add an extra layer of protection which really helped keep the basement warmer.

In the past, I was struggling to maintain pH in my tank. I was historically around 7.8 even dosing Soda Ash and Kalk. During the remodel of the basement, once I got to the unfinished wall where the windows are located to start framing that wall, I took the plastic down. Since then, I have not had to dose Kalk at all. I dose much less soda ash (to maintain alkalinity) and my pH has maintained between 8.2-8.5.

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

See what fresh air will do.

 

[griss]

To add though, I did have to add a third heater to maintain temperature.

 

[C.Eymann]

Tanks in basements notoriously run lower in pH due to CO² being a denser gas, it's pretty amazing to see how impactful ambient CO2 levels can be on even the very large culture systems that get dosed with 10+ gallons of kalk each day at the farm.
It's quite evident on our pH graphs, during the week the pH stair steps down getting lower each day M-F due to there being 16 people there, then on the weekend when only one staff member is there it jumps way back up.
Ambient CO2 concentration at the farm nears 1100ppm towards the end of the day Friday, then by Saturday afternoon it's down to 450ppm

It's interesting though that with the increased pH your tank is experiencing you are having to dose less to keep up mineral demand, usually it's the opposite, we have to throttle back kalk/ cal and Mg dosing progressively through M-F as the average pH drops, then usually do large manual additions to keep up with increased demand over the weekend.

 

[Dustin07]

I still find ph perplexing. With our new M100 tank we have about 20 more gallons of water than we did in the redsea 425xl but my ph is much higher. Only thing that changed is that the old tank was running Nov - Jan and had a lot more corals in it. New tank is only about 3 months old so not a great case study. same location though. Now we were in peak cold season for us with the old tank, running wood fires every night to keep the house warm. now that I think of it, that could have been why my ph was so much lower in the old tank.