URgent help please: ph 9.4: accident.

[Sk8r]

Put a plug in the wrong power socket, turned on my topoff pump AND kalk reactor, which emptied the reactor's dissolved kalk into my tank...ph now 9.4 by the meter. Things completely cloudy as you may imagine. This all within the last hour.

Suggestions, please. How do I lower ph? SHould I lower ph??
THings at hand: white vinegar, alkalinity buffer.

Help greatly appreciated. THanks in advance.

 

[bassettmd]

Water Change!!

 

[rustybucket145]

How much was dumped in? How are the inhabitants looking?

Mix up some water asap, but i'd probably hold off putting it in. The kalk will settle and everything will get back to normal fairly quickly. Definitely use the baster to blow off any kalk that is settling on corals.

Other than that it really shouldn't be that bad. Give it an hour or two to settle and you should be fine.

 

[Anemone]

Actually, I'd use vinegar to lower the pH, then do a water change (the larger the better).

The vinegar will have more effect on the overall pH (unless you can do a very large volume water change), and the later water change can help remove any residual organics from the vinegar.

Vinegar isn't bad - people use it to hypersaturate kalkwasser with calcium, but you'll need to be careful adding it directly to the tank. You don't want to add too much and get into a cycle of pH too low, then too high, then too low, etc. Do it slowly, get the pH down, then water change.

Good luck,
Kevin

 

[seapug]

take 1 gallon of water from the tank, stick the pH meter in it and drip the vinegar in until the pH is where you want it, then extrapolate the amount of vinegar it took get 1 gallon down to the range you want to the volume of the tank...?

 

[Sk8r]

Thanks, guys. Off to brush off my math skills. I can't see the critters. Of course I'd just stirred up the kalk before I came upstairs. So I'd estimate as much as a quarter pound of lime went in to a system with about 80 gal water, counting sump, total. Blowing off the corals: good idea. Clam's still open: can see it. Others uncertain.

 

[rustybucket145]

Think.... Hurricaine! I wouldn't get to crazy with the vinegar, you may over correct.

 

[zach0660]

That sucks, I hope everything gets back to normal and hopefully you wont lose much.

 

[Sk8r]

I've held back on the vinegar for now: I measured ph when I first realized what had happened---[my upstairs tank went opaque]. It was 9.4. In the time it took me to run downstairs, find a bucket, find the vinegar, measure out a gallon and try some vinegar, the tank water had dropped on its own to 8.9, so it's coming down fast.

WHat happened...I was installing a timer on my stirrer, and got a shiny new extension---which it didn't fit; had to go to plan b. Meanwhile looked at that tatty plug on the topoff pump, decided it would fit better on the other extension, congratulated myself it went right in- [stupid me! the other extension is the one connected to the float switch! I'd just told the topoff to start running and keep going. So it blitzed salinity as well as dumped my whole kalk reactor kalkwasser supply into the tank....

And what are my corals doing as the dust settles? Open wide and sucking it all in as if, hitherto, I'd starved them.

I really, really may get out of this with a tank still functioning, never mind the reefer's own stupidity. Doh---let's just move this plug over so there's not a gap---doh!

THank you all so much for good advice: more water's ro/di'ing, I got at least 7 g saltwater mixing [stole water from the topoff barrel] and I have both vinegar and buffer standing by. Plus a turkey baster. WHen you do something this abysmally stupid, it's a real comfort to be able to go onto RC and know you're hearing advice from people with their heads on straight!

 

[rustybucket145]

hehe.. yup. When I od'd on kalk one time (long story) my tank clouded up bad.... the most open i've EVER seen my corals. EVERYTHING's polyps were full extended and open. They looked really kick *** for a couple of weeks after that.

 

[ribs]

How high did the PH get for how long?
Nice you caught it right away!!!

 

[corals b 4 bills]

I HATE TANK EMERGENCY'S!! I hope everythings O.K. let us know how it goes, I would rather have the PH go too high than too low. Roll up the sleeves and kick reef butt!

 

[USC-fan]

soda water is better than vinegar at lowing PH/

 

[mrrrkva]

Just do any corrections SLOW!!! Please, it will double shock everything. Keep blowing off of all the corals and when you do siphon of the water, do so out of the tank trying to suck the kalk powder off

 

[seapug]

glad to offer advice to someone who helps so many....

 

[ribs]

I'd correct it quick.
Must say that only because my experience with OD kalk was discovered hours later than this was.
For the lack of a better term... inhabitants just got "burned".......put out the fire immediately.

 

[Sk8r]

THank you all! I can report all the corals are indeed open and happy, the frogspawn being the only slightly annoyed one---the fish are all accounted for and the tank has cleared. I'm still watching it closely: ph is trending closer to norm, and nobody is dead, not even the 3 pep shrimp, nor the clam, nor any coral.

Grateful to the max. And this was the evening I'd set aside to kick back and relax.

 

[ActinopteryGuy]

Glad to hear it worked out ok

 

[corals b 4 bills]

That was like an E ride at disneyland.