KH Director

[Mortie31]

I really wish I hadn’t had issues with bubbles in reagents as I want to let mine loose dosing as well, but don’t think it would do much as my Alk levels are do consistant, I may have a look at programming it this afternoon

 

[Mortie31]

Mortie there is no alk swing any more. It’s dosing that amount to keep the alk level flat in the tank at roughly 8.5dkh.

That’s great, it’s really interesting to see the differences in our readings and Alk use, mine are very linear throughout a 24 hr period, my tank is mainly SPS, 800L I dose 22ml of each triton core7 daily

 

[Ditto]

@ZaneTer I am not 100% sure yet but I am
Noticing my coral are all fully extended and seem much healthier.

What I was surprised by was my consumption now, but I also tested Mag and Cal and they are also in check.

 

[ZaneTer]

Here Mortie:

And here is how I am currently set up:

 

[Mortie31]

Thanks Zaneter, you are giving me confidence to let mine loose with dosing as well, do you really do 24 tests a day? How Is this affecting your salinity? As your removing over 2L of water a day. Sorry for bombarding you with questions, your answering them is greatly appreciated and I’m sure very helpful for a lot of slower adopters like me.

 

[ZaneTer]

Mortie
That seems like very low consumption. I’m also 800l and I am very sparsely populated with SPS, they are only small colonies. (I am looking to grow my colonies to about 12” across each).
Saying that I was on 25ml a month ago but I know I was PO4 starved.

This sudden uptake has spurred me to get a calcium reactor because at the current pace in a years time I won’t be able to afford to run Triton.

 

[ZaneTer]

Haha no Mortie that is just me messing around. I bought 3l of reagent when I got my system.

 

[ZaneTer]

I am very happy to answer the questions that I can. It’s kind of why we are all here.

 

[Mortie31]

Mortie
That seems like very low consumption. I’m also 800l and I am very sparsely populated with SPS, they are only small colonies. (I am looking to grow my colonies to about 12” across each).
Saying that I was on 25ml a month ago but I know I was PO4 starved.

This sudden uptake has spurred me to get a calcium reactor because at the current pace in a years time I won’t be able to afford to run Triton.

I had very high Mg levels so had to drop triton dosing and Alk levels to 7 and I was dosing Alk manually to try to get everything back in balance, for the last 2 months ive also done constant water changes as I had issues caused by rusty MP60 and 40.

 

[Mortie31]

Mortie
That seems like very low consumption. I’m also 800l and I am very sparsely populated with SPS, they are only small colonies. (I am looking to grow my colonies to about 12” across each).
Saying that I was on 25ml a month ago but I know I was PO4 starved.

This sudden uptake has spurred me to get a calcium reactor because at the current pace in a years time I won’t be able to afford to run Triton.

Good coral growth costs money... but it’s a nice problem, in my experience your Alk use will stabilise and flatten off once you are matching growth with consumption. Saying that if you have large plating montis they are huge Alk consumers, I pulled all of mine out as it was ridiculous a few years ago

 

[ZaneTer]

Well that may explain it. I live in newcastle by the way......upon Tyne.

 

[Mortie31]

Well that may explain it. I live in newcastle by the way......upon Tyne.

A fellow Brit.. nice to meet you, I was surprised by how many posts you were making as it’s still very early in the US.. now I know why.

 

[ZaneTer]

Hahaha it’s rather more complicated than that. I am ex South African but the U.K. has been home for 16 years. I’m awake because currently I am working a contract in Kunming, China. It is what spurred me to get a controller and alk controller.

 

[Mortie31]

Just trying to set up KHD to automate dosing, I cannot find anywhere to reduce the dosing trigger deviation of 1 dKH from setpoint, this is to big a swing and I’d like to reduce to 0.5dkh, does anyone know how to do this?
Thx Paul

 

[WWIII]

Just trying to set up KHD to automate dosing, I cannot find anywhere to reduce the dosing trigger deviation of 1 dKH from setpoint, this is to big a swing and I’d like to reduce to 0.5dkh, does anyone know how to do this?
Thx Paul

I'm pretty sure the kh director figures it out for you. So if you're dosing 10ml at a time and you set the kh director to adjust up to 50% or say 5 ml for every 1 dkh under, the kh director will dose 25% or 2.5ml(maybe 2 or 3) when the alkalinity is only .5 dkh out of where you set it.

In other words it will dose 50% of what you set for a 1 dkh variance when the kh director reads only a .5 dkh difference. A .25 dkh difference it would dose 25% of the extra amount you set.

Kinda hard to expalain, but is the way I understand it.

 

[ZaneTer]

Paul you don’t need to, the literature is a little difficult to understand but it will make proportional changes to your dosing even if you are only 0.1dkh away from setpoint.
Just plug in the settings I showed above for the adaptive control or adjust your max dosing increase to something you feel comfortable with and leave it be for a day. When I did it I turned up my sampling to 24, I know it uses reagent but it put my mind at ease. You will only need to do it for a day.

One note to bear in mind:
You must set samples to be taken on the hour.
Set your dosing to happen at :20 past the hour with each head separated by 5min.
If you don’t do this you will “contaminate” your sample with your dose.

 

[ZaneTer]

Absolutely correct.

I'm pretty sure the kh director figures it out for you. So if you're dosing 10ml at a time and you set the kh director to adjust up to 50% or say 5 ml for every 1 dkh under, the kh director will dose 25% or 2.5ml(maybe 2 or 3) when the alkalinity is only .5 dkh out of where you set it.

In other words it will dose 50% of what you set for a 1 dkh variance when the kh director reads only a .5 dkh difference. A .25 dkh difference it would dose 25% of the extra amount you set.

Kinda hard to expalain, but is the way I understand it.

 

[Mortie31]

Thank you WW111 and Zane, your explanations make perfect sense now, the manual had confused me,

 

[ZaneTer]

The manual confuses many people

 

[dragon99]

The manual confuses many people

I've never seen so many dangers and warnings in my life. You'd think this thing was a armed criminal wanted for murder.