Vdlibrtr
Community Member
Hey all, so this has been like a 6 month struggle for me, I had a crash in December cuz of a lapse in judgement and been slowly battling my way back.
So here's where I am, I was battling really low ph, like 7.6 as a high in my tank in december, ended up grabbing a second probe for redundancy, same reading. then I added a skimmer and opened the windows to my person and pet filled apartment, nothing changed, I then added a closed loop co2 scrubber onto the skimmer, that raised my ph up to about 7.8 as a high. I then started looking into kalk dosing to make up the rest. It ran at an awesome 8.2 throughout the day, and would dip to maybe 8 at night, been trying to dial in the dosage to get the ph to swing less....
so cut to a week ago and ive been running my kalk stirrer for about 3 months or so, I did an ICP test and was deficient in some trace elements, everything else was good. ive been testing my phos and nitrates, trying to get my nitrates up, keep my phos between .03-.06 and focus less on alk and more on ph (alk would rise to about 12.5 on occasion but everything was super happy). I then started dosing meerwasser for those trace elements it has mainly because a frogspawn was starting to get ticked and my gonis weren't growing very well. afterwards I started to noticed my Ph dropped to 7.9 as a low and will barely raise up past 8.1. now... im wondering if meerwasser would affect the ph? I just recalibrated, probes, added new media to the Co2 scrubber and replaced my kalk solution a week ago.
I'm in a small 35gal with no refugium or sump, not sure if AIO have a hard time keeping ph but would be curious to hear anyone's thoughts... also the ph doesn't change when I open every single window in the house for 5+ hours
Thanks for your input!
So here's where I am, I was battling really low ph, like 7.6 as a high in my tank in december, ended up grabbing a second probe for redundancy, same reading. then I added a skimmer and opened the windows to my person and pet filled apartment, nothing changed, I then added a closed loop co2 scrubber onto the skimmer, that raised my ph up to about 7.8 as a high. I then started looking into kalk dosing to make up the rest. It ran at an awesome 8.2 throughout the day, and would dip to maybe 8 at night, been trying to dial in the dosage to get the ph to swing less....
so cut to a week ago and ive been running my kalk stirrer for about 3 months or so, I did an ICP test and was deficient in some trace elements, everything else was good. ive been testing my phos and nitrates, trying to get my nitrates up, keep my phos between .03-.06 and focus less on alk and more on ph (alk would rise to about 12.5 on occasion but everything was super happy). I then started dosing meerwasser for those trace elements it has mainly because a frogspawn was starting to get ticked and my gonis weren't growing very well. afterwards I started to noticed my Ph dropped to 7.9 as a low and will barely raise up past 8.1. now... im wondering if meerwasser would affect the ph? I just recalibrated, probes, added new media to the Co2 scrubber and replaced my kalk solution a week ago.
I'm in a small 35gal with no refugium or sump, not sure if AIO have a hard time keeping ph but would be curious to hear anyone's thoughts... also the ph doesn't change when I open every single window in the house for 5+ hours
Thanks for your input!
