After years of not worrying about my ph levels, I have seen some people I following raise their ph levels and successfully increase coral growth. I couldn't get the idea out of my head so.......I started the Co2 scrubber about 6 days ago. The thought is that a higher ph allows for faster calcification and therefor faster growth
After implementation, I would say that it is pretty clear that Alk demand increased. I fell out of my specified Alk range a couple of times since in the first 38 hours and the Alkatronic has supplemented twice, and that is after I had already increased my dosing schedule in anticipation of increased demand.
My increased dosing schedule has helped keep up with demand but I have to keep tweaking it to keep up.
Please note that while the Alkatronic is measuring my Alk between 9.0 and 9.3, in reality my Alk is more like 8.4 to 8.7. This is due to a slight calibration error by me either in calibrating the pumps or the reagent solution. It could be remedied by re-calibration, however I know what the measurement is off by so I am fine with it. As long as I stay in my programmed target range I am happy.
Here are a couple ugly pictures of it setup.
I went with the jumbo dual reactor, each side holds 6 cups of media for a total of 12 cups. I set it up Tuesday and I would estimate I am about 40% through the media, the first reactor has lots of purple media but the second reactor is still totally white. I plumbed the air intake into the skimmer cup to provide humid air to help the longevity of the media as well as to recycle some scrubber air, again increasing the longevity of the media. So far so good!