Apex Dosing question

[alindell]

So I'm using a classic Apex system with an EB 8 and a BRS doser 1.1 ml. I slowly add kalk throughout the day and it's at a constant rate every hour. At night the tank will drop in PH even though I'm dosing kalk. So far Ive got my PH up to 8.2 and it will drop down to about 7.98 when the lights go off.

My question is, is there a way I can easily dose more kalk at night versus the day under the one dosing pump and outlet to help buffer the PH? I'm trying to keep my tank at a stable PH and I don't want the swing. Maybe there is a way to program that one outlet?? I don't want to increase the amount I dose throughout the whole day necessarily, but I will if I need to. I just want to add more at night and less in the day or have some sort of configuration that helps stabilize my PH.

 

[blaxsun]

pH swings during a 24/7 period are normal and I wouldn't try to necessarily offset this with changing your dosing. You have a nice pH range right now.

 

[pledosophy]

Chris Meckley from ACI Aquaculture talks about achieving this with Kalk quite a bit. I have just started it on my system, so I am not able to tell you how great it works or doesn't, but he has been doing it for year. You can google it to find out more about it, and there is a great video with Melev on Youtube that he talks about it for a couple hours. You would benefit from watching the whole thing. I did not at first and ran into some unexpected problems for me, but he clearly outlines them through the video.

Basically I have my DOS set to dose twice the amount of water I evaporate in Kalk. So for my tank that is 2000mL.

The DOS is scheduled to turn on if the pH is under 8.2 or off if the pH hits 8.4

Because of how pH works, this will leave the DOS really just dosing kalk at night time.

You don't want to start that high though, to begin you would have the DOS turn on when the aquariums pH is lower then your daily average over the last week or so. From your graph it looks like that is around 8.1

After a few days you can increase that to 8.2

Then if you really want to hit 8.3 increase it to 8.3 from there. 8.3 is as high as most recommend.

Having the DOS turn off at 8.4 is just a failsafe so your tank does not get over dosed.

Other things he warned about were making sure that your kalk reservoir is covered so you are not mixing C02 with the kalk as it will greatly reduce it's potency. You also want to make sure your kalk is fully saturated. As always with Kalk you will want to make sure you are dosing from the top of the container so you never dose the slurry. He has a floating thing with legs on it...I went with something different.

Chris also talks about how you need to store your bag of kalk in an air tight bag, in an air tight bag, in an air tight bucket. He also measures the pH of his kalk to make sure it is 12.4 (right around there if I recall correctly). If the pH of the kalk is to low it is not as effective.

The other concern most people see is a rapidly rising alk reading with this method. It's expected, he suggests to ignore it. Things will level out in time. Chris did have to start dosing calcium again after 5/6 months.

Hard to sum up a two hour video in a few paragraphs but hopefully you get the idea.