KonradTO
Valuable Member
Hi all,
In the last 3 weeks I did some experimenting on my 32g DT+ 15g fuge, and I think you might find interesting my results.
For those in a hurry here's a quick sumup of the post:
BEFORE LOW PH-->ADDED AIRSTONE AND MORE WATER MOVEMENT-->NOT ENOUGH--> MORE LIGHTS= MORE PH SWING-->FUNKY SKIMMER SETTING-->YAY, SUCCESS!
LOOK AT GRAPH BELOW
A bit of background:
After months of measuring pH by bringing vials of water to work (where I can access a lab) and getting low reads (7.6-7.8 throughout the day), I decided to explore more the pH issue since my corals were not doing very well and I had a massive dinoflagellate problem.
Many people told me that chasing pH was pointless but at the same time I was reading here in the forum that higher pH and temperatures might help with Amphidinium,
Therefore I purchased a 30$ pH probe and connected to my reef-pi controller.
First thing I did was measuring pH in tank, and after 1h in a well aerated cup. I clearly had a problem in gas exchange since my pH in tank was 7.6 and after aeration was 8.1 (!!).
Then I added an airstone in the sump connected to an air pump placed outside, added another wavemaker and monitored pH.
Situation was improving, but not enough. My daily pH was reaching at max 7.8 with all that water movement added and the airstone.
But what about ligh then? I knew my pH was reaching the highest value when my DT lights were ramping down. This meant that if I was running my lights more I would have depleted more CO2 with photosynthesis, and therefore increased my pH. Maybe my problem was a too short photoperiod?
Over the next couple of days I increased my blue lights from 8 to 12h and white lights from 6 to 8h. It was risky due to dinoflagellates but... I observed an increase in the max value of pH, up until 8.1 (YES!).. BUT also my bottom value was decreasing (all the way back to 7.6 , OUCH!). Basically I made my pH swing more pronounced in some way. Algae were consuming CO2 during the day, but this was followed by more intense cellular respiration I guess, which resulted in much higher pH swings.
I had to get rid of the excess CO2 if I wanted to increase my pH. In fact, like Randy explained very well in his articles, in presence of decent values of kH (> 7 dkH) the only reason for acidification can be CO2 excess in our tanks or in our houses.
After almost 1 year of reefing, I gave up and got myself a (cheap) skimmer. My problem was that I did not want to reduce my available nutrients though (dinos, remember?) , so I connected the skimmer with the drain open, flushing constantly the super wet skimmate back to the sump. In this way I avoided any possible bacteria proliferation in the skimmer cup, avoiding to alter the nutrient balance at the same time. Also the skimmer air intake was placed outside of the window.
In the meanwhile,I started to see Ostreopsis in my tank as well, but with the silicate dosing I noticed Amphidinium was growing slower. What to do?
I always solved Ostreopsis problems with UV+blackout and I knew some people found blackouts helpful with Amphidinium when performed in the last phases of the recession. So I proceeded with a blackout, and turned the skimmer on. It was a perfect occasion to see the effect of the skimmer on the CO2 content of the water, without the interference of the photosythesys.
Moreover, as additional mesure to prevent poor gas exchange, I modified my acrylic lid and made a mesh lid instead.
As you can see, the pH started almost immediatly to rise despite the lack of photosynthesis. The gap in pH between 7.6 and 8 was ALL caused by CO2 trapped in the water.
Once 3days-blackout was over I slowly started to ramp up my lights again. You can see that the day/night swing is almost gone and pH keeps increasing as my lights come back to normal intensity.
Now my pH hovers between 8.05 and 8.15. Not perfect but I am satisfied, as it will probably increase with dosing once I will have more sps corals consuming kH.
I hope it was not a boring post. My suggestion for those struggling with pH is to get a cheap skimmer (mine was 80$) and place the air intake outside if you can, otherwise use a CO2 scrubber connected to the air intake. Somehow I resisted to the skimmer idea until now because I never had problems with nutrient export with the fuge. On the contrary I always struggled to keep nitrates up enough. But I think that a setting like mine is not affecting nutrients and the increased gas exchange can only improve the quality of the water. I thought I had enough gas exchange with a lot of surface movement, but apparently wasn't enough for some reason.
I cannot tell if it was because of the pH or because of the silicate dosing dealing with the Amphidinium, but since I added the skimmer all the corals seems happier and "plump". I have seen almost no growth in months and now I finally noticed some new zoa heads coming out from the plugs. It might be a combination of the 2, or simply my tank finally reaching stability, but my tank looks much better now.
In the last 3 weeks I did some experimenting on my 32g DT+ 15g fuge, and I think you might find interesting my results.
For those in a hurry here's a quick sumup of the post:
BEFORE LOW PH-->ADDED AIRSTONE AND MORE WATER MOVEMENT-->NOT ENOUGH--> MORE LIGHTS= MORE PH SWING-->FUNKY SKIMMER SETTING-->YAY, SUCCESS!
LOOK AT GRAPH BELOW
A bit of background:
After months of measuring pH by bringing vials of water to work (where I can access a lab) and getting low reads (7.6-7.8 throughout the day), I decided to explore more the pH issue since my corals were not doing very well and I had a massive dinoflagellate problem.
Many people told me that chasing pH was pointless but at the same time I was reading here in the forum that higher pH and temperatures might help with Amphidinium,
Therefore I purchased a 30$ pH probe and connected to my reef-pi controller.
First thing I did was measuring pH in tank, and after 1h in a well aerated cup. I clearly had a problem in gas exchange since my pH in tank was 7.6 and after aeration was 8.1 (!!).
Then I added an airstone in the sump connected to an air pump placed outside, added another wavemaker and monitored pH.
Situation was improving, but not enough. My daily pH was reaching at max 7.8 with all that water movement added and the airstone.
But what about ligh then? I knew my pH was reaching the highest value when my DT lights were ramping down. This meant that if I was running my lights more I would have depleted more CO2 with photosynthesis, and therefore increased my pH. Maybe my problem was a too short photoperiod?
Over the next couple of days I increased my blue lights from 8 to 12h and white lights from 6 to 8h. It was risky due to dinoflagellates but... I observed an increase in the max value of pH, up until 8.1 (YES!).. BUT also my bottom value was decreasing (all the way back to 7.6 , OUCH!). Basically I made my pH swing more pronounced in some way. Algae were consuming CO2 during the day, but this was followed by more intense cellular respiration I guess, which resulted in much higher pH swings.
I had to get rid of the excess CO2 if I wanted to increase my pH. In fact, like Randy explained very well in his articles, in presence of decent values of kH (> 7 dkH) the only reason for acidification can be CO2 excess in our tanks or in our houses.
After almost 1 year of reefing, I gave up and got myself a (cheap) skimmer. My problem was that I did not want to reduce my available nutrients though (dinos, remember?) , so I connected the skimmer with the drain open, flushing constantly the super wet skimmate back to the sump. In this way I avoided any possible bacteria proliferation in the skimmer cup, avoiding to alter the nutrient balance at the same time. Also the skimmer air intake was placed outside of the window.
In the meanwhile,I started to see Ostreopsis in my tank as well, but with the silicate dosing I noticed Amphidinium was growing slower. What to do?
I always solved Ostreopsis problems with UV+blackout and I knew some people found blackouts helpful with Amphidinium when performed in the last phases of the recession. So I proceeded with a blackout, and turned the skimmer on. It was a perfect occasion to see the effect of the skimmer on the CO2 content of the water, without the interference of the photosythesys.
Moreover, as additional mesure to prevent poor gas exchange, I modified my acrylic lid and made a mesh lid instead.
As you can see, the pH started almost immediatly to rise despite the lack of photosynthesis. The gap in pH between 7.6 and 8 was ALL caused by CO2 trapped in the water.
Once 3days-blackout was over I slowly started to ramp up my lights again. You can see that the day/night swing is almost gone and pH keeps increasing as my lights come back to normal intensity.
Now my pH hovers between 8.05 and 8.15. Not perfect but I am satisfied, as it will probably increase with dosing once I will have more sps corals consuming kH.
I hope it was not a boring post. My suggestion for those struggling with pH is to get a cheap skimmer (mine was 80$) and place the air intake outside if you can, otherwise use a CO2 scrubber connected to the air intake. Somehow I resisted to the skimmer idea until now because I never had problems with nutrient export with the fuge. On the contrary I always struggled to keep nitrates up enough. But I think that a setting like mine is not affecting nutrients and the increased gas exchange can only improve the quality of the water. I thought I had enough gas exchange with a lot of surface movement, but apparently wasn't enough for some reason.
I cannot tell if it was because of the pH or because of the silicate dosing dealing with the Amphidinium, but since I added the skimmer all the corals seems happier and "plump". I have seen almost no growth in months and now I finally noticed some new zoa heads coming out from the plugs. It might be a combination of the 2, or simply my tank finally reaching stability, but my tank looks much better now.
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