What's bad for humans is bad for a reef!

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Treefer32

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So, this winter I moved my skimmer hose to my air exchanger vent (I don't actually have an air exchanger, but had the vents roughed in for one someday). This boosted my ph from 7.5 at night to 7.8 at night and I have been hitting 8.06 almost 8.1 during the day. Which is huge boosts for me.

However... Recently, I guess, Canada is disappearing in flames. So, I'm suffering the fallout. Walk out the door of our house and it smells like a permanent camp fire. The sun is being blocked by a haze, temperatures are dropping from the mid 80s to mid 60s within a 2 day time period. It's not good. The air quality level dropped to hazardous for a period of time in the last 24 hours according to the NWS.

I've got a carbon air embedded furnace filter on my HVAC System. The filters cost $100 a piece. But removes a lot of things from the air. So, worth it in my opinion. Including smoke smell!

However, my tank's ph has dropped to 7.7 for the first time in months. Are there any dangers of pulling in smoke into the tank that could contain toxic elements? My 4 year old 340 gallon mixed reef is thriving for the most part. So, curious on whether smoke being pulled into the water could cause any type of unintended toxicity? I run AquaChar in the a cannister filter (I filled it with matrix rock and Aqua Char and removed the filter cartridge). So, I've got water being filtered through a form of carbon 24/7.

The smoke concentrations outside are ridiculous, it's affecting our sinuses and eyes inside the house with doors and windows sealed. So, there's no avoiding it. Just checking if there's anything I should worry about?

So far the living organisms seem fine... I prefer preventing catastrophes vs. reacting to them. PH Isn't as low as it used to be despite the smoke, so my initial thought is things are o.k. But, I don't know how many forrest fires occur in / around the ocean. :)
 
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Rusty_L_Shackleford

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Sounds to me like you've got the right idea running carbon. Personally I would run the air intake back to house air. Smoke can contain all kinds of bad things and I would worry about it getting pulled into the tank. It's not worth the risk even if it's a small one. Maybe try a co2 scrubber on the intake.?
 
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