Alk, Mag, and Cal plummeted after servicing protein skimmer.

[nothing_fancy]

Hello, I have a curious issue here. I just pulled my skimmer to do my once yearly cleaning. Very simple soak in a little bit of Sicce pump clean overnight. I rinsed the skimmer thoroughly and re-installed. I made a change in regards to the way it was plumbed. I was running its inlet pump through a small reactor with a very small amount of carbon and some ceramic media. I decided to remove that. I don't think that would have had much effect. Anyhow, upon re-installing the skimmer my numbers on alk mag and cal dropped in a way that I assumed at first must have been test error (I have not ruled that out yet).
Alkalinity fell from 8.7 to 7.1, Ca 422 to 263 and Mag 1314 to 871.

My dKh is normally very stable from 8.1 to 8.8. Cal and mag are always very stable. I am a bit confused as to how it would be possible to lose so much mag and cal in a matter of hours. I have ran numerous trident tests and have primed. I will try some hanna tests to be 100% sure however I have no issues with my trident and I would think this to be too coincidental to suddenly have test errors after skimmer maintenance. The system is fairly mature so I am not stressing, I believe it can handle it and will adjust back up in some time. I am just curious if anyone else has experienced this. I was expecting PH differences from not running my skimmer for 24hr but this water chemistry change I was not expecting. Any thoughts are much appreciated.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

To be honest, I don't believe the results can be accurate. There's simply no mechanism to drop calcium and magnesium like that. You'd need to add 125 dKH of alk to remove them as calcium and magnesium carbonate, and there are no other export mechanisms unless you highly diluted the tank water with huge amounts of fresh water.

 

[nothing_fancy]

To be honest, I don't believe the results can be accurate. There's simply no mechanism to drop calcium and magnesium like that. You'd need to add 125 dKH of alk to remove them as calcium and magnesium carbonate, and there are no other export mechanisms unless you highly diluted the tank water with huge amounts of fresh water.

Thanks for the quick response Randy, yes I find it hard to believe as well. My salinity has remained the same however I think I will break out the old hydrometer later today to be sure. I did have to mix and add some SW after installing the skimmer to make up for the water volume of the skimmer. Hopefully my Hannah checker didn't let me down.

 

[peterhos]

Thanks for the quick response Randy, yes I find it hard to believe as well. My salinity has remained the same however I think I will break out the old hydrometer later today to be sure. I did have to mix and add some SW after installing the skimmer to make up for the water volume of the skimmer. Hopefully my Hannah checker didn't let me down.

My new salinity checker-Hanna- let me down badly after only 6 weeks. The battery power level was not 100%, and no other % was displayed when switching the checker on. So my salinity shot up. Hopefully the checker now, with new battery, will be accurate.

 

[rbancroft]

that's weird. I've used the hanna checker for 5 years and I may have changed the battery once if at all....

 

[Tuan’s Reef]

The Hanna salinity checker is about as accurate as throwing a dart at a wall.

 

[rbancroft]

Maybe. I calibrate it every couple of months and I don't notice a lot of drift. Whether it is absolutely correct I don't know but it works for me. The convenience means I'm checking more often than I otherwise would, so probably a tradeoff there.

 

[rbancroft]

Hanna Salinity Checker:
Resolution: 0.001 S.G.
Accuracy: ±0.001 S.G.

Milwaukee Digital Salinity Refractometer:
Resolution: 0.001 S.G.
Accuracy: ±0.002 S.G.

 

[MnFish1]

Hello, I have a curious issue here. I just pulled my skimmer to do my once yearly cleaning. Very simple soak in a little bit of Sicce pump clean overnight. I rinsed the skimmer thoroughly and re-installed. I made a change in regards to the way it was plumbed. I was running its inlet pump through a small reactor with a very small amount of carbon and some ceramic media. I decided to remove that. I don't think that would have had much effect. Anyhow, upon re-installing the skimmer my numbers on alk mag and cal dropped in a way that I assumed at first must have been test error (I have not ruled that out yet).
Alkalinity fell from 8.7 to 7.1, Ca 422 to 263 and Mag 1314 to 871.

My dKh is normally very stable from 8.1 to 8.8. Cal and mag are always very stable. I am a bit confused as to how it would be possible to lose so much mag and cal in a matter of hours. I have ran numerous trident tests and have primed. I will try some hanna tests to be 100% sure however I have no issues with my trident and I would think this to be too coincidental to suddenly have test errors after skimmer maintenance. The system is fairly mature so I am not stressing, I believe it can handle it and will adjust back up in some time. I am just curious if anyone else has experienced this. I was expecting PH differences from not running my skimmer for 24hr but this water chemistry change I was not expecting. Any thoughts are much appreciated.

Agree with Randy. Have you tried re-calibrating your trident? Additionally rechecking your numbers (as you're planned) - if you're dosing based on your trident numbers - I would stop that.

 

[nothing_fancy]

Agree with Randy. Have you tried re-calibrating your trident? Additionally rechecking your numbers (as you're planned) - if you're dosing based on your trident numbers - I would stop that.

Yes, thanks, I went in and checked everything against Hannah. Things definitely swung due to the issue with the trident but over the course of the past week I have been able to get them back in line. So the problem was of course user (me) error. When I reinstalled my skimmer I pinched the waste line coming from the trident and it caused the fluids to back up into the trident. It took a day or so for it to become an issue, unfortunately the waste line is tucked back and hard to see. Lesson learned. Had to take the whole thing apart and clear all the lines, re cal, and was back in good shape. My trident does control dosing for alk and cal however the low numbers were due to lack of sample water entering the cuvette. This did however cause my trident to continually dose cal and alk cause a spike in the other direction, over +1 dkh.