Calcium reactor ph problem.

[Hilltopreef]

Hope to get some help with my ph problems. Recently added an avast seabones calcium reactor and am battling tuning it in. Ph is becoming a problem. I’m going to try opening windows as the 4th of July weekend my kids were home More than tripling the Normal number of people in my house. But a thought occurred to me I want to run by Randy or the people at Avast Or anyone else. What do you think of dripping effluent into the top of a protein Skimmer? I could drill a hole just big enough for the drip tube to fit through. What do you think the Skimmer would pull out? Doesn’t pull out alk or calcium on a normal day so it shouldn’t change anything except hopefully the C02 content. What do you guys think.

 

[Hilltopreef]

Adding in paremeters. Calcium last check 575 ppm ( I know a little high. Was 600 a week ago)
Alkalinity last check 9.812
DKH of affluent 24.75 dripping approx 25 ml per minute. Not adjustable on a seabones that’s why I ordered a kamoer fx stp Pump while it was on sale for the 4th.
Mag at 1300 I’m adjusting it up.
180 gallon mixed reef with maybe 20 Gallons in the sump.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

It might be helpful to drip into a skimmer. Some folks also run it over more calcium carbonate.

 

[Hilltopreef]

Another reoccurring problem is when I think I’m about to get it dialed in (avast seabones Reactor) the C02 overtakes the water in the main chamber and the pump starts to cavitate. Only about a half an inch of water over the intake of the pump. It’s supposed to run like a wet dry with a pocket of C02 in the chamber. I’m using ARM course media and I think it’s letting the water circulate too quickly. I’m gonna try topping off with some finer media above some reborn like media I’ve purchased to see if it helps slow it down.

 

[amps]

For the first problem, do you have the secondary chamber? It really makes a difference.

For your second, can you turn down your CO2 rate? It sounds like it's going into the reactor faster than it can be used and is building up. Try lowering your bubble count.

 

[Hilltopreef]

I’ll try it but I’m having to use ARM media because reborn isn’t available and keeping the ph in the reactor at 6.5 seems to be the only way to melt the media. Even at that I can only get the affluent alkalinity around 14 to 18 DKH. I’ve got some new media I ordered from Middle Keys that look like reborn I’m going to try out. Also I do have a secondary chamber full of seachem medium sized media.

 

[Hilltopreef]

Here is my latest experiment. Bulk reef supply C02 scrubber set up as recirculating. Seems to have helped. Went from 7.8 at night to 7.98 or 8 and just over 8 before to 8.19 or more during the day. The next time I clean my Skimmer I’ll take the silencer out of the loop. As you can see from the pic I’ve got the drain open on the Skimmer cup so that it cannot fill up and cause the scrubber the draw in water. The specimen container that the Skimmer cup drains into is slightly tilted toward the sump so if it were to overflow it would overflow into the sump.

 

[Robinson]

When you have a chance, switch to the Middle key media. Im using that and currently melting at 7.0 PH with an effluent of 35 ml x min. Keep my alk around 7.45 to 7.65 daily swing (alkatronic testing every 4 hrs).

Just make sure you remove the shells from the media as some people mentioned that may release phosphate (not sure about this) but just in case.

My tank consumption is around 1.2 dkh daily. And my ph is 8.0 - 8.26

 

[Hilltopreef]

Thank! I’m already using the middle keys media. I haven’t tried raising the reactor ph that high yet. I’m using an Avast reactor with a second chamber and have battling leaks and other problem. To be honest I wish I had went with a geo instead but the avast is working and I guess I’m stuck with it. It’s keeping my DKH around the 8.8 range so that’s good.

 

[Hilltopreef]

What brand reactor are you using? The Avast people have been good to work with but the reactor arrived broken. I Had to glue it back together and it took 3 second chambers to get one to me that wasn’t broken. Then I had to re- glue the main reactor chamber to get it to stop leaking. Avast supplied the glue. Also it cavitates alot do to the water level in it being low. The middle keys media has worked well since I installed it over a month ago. The ARM I tried using is now in the bottom of my tank as substrate. It works great for that. Doesn’t blow around like the reef sand And it ticks of my maroon clown cause he can’t fan it around and make a mess as easily. Jerk bites me so he deserves it.

 

[Robinson]

Im using a Geo 612 and my tank is a reefer 425 xl. Around 100 gallons and full of SPS corals. Before I did the switch to CaRx I was dosing aquaforest three part, around 160ml daily.

 

[ScottB]

I run a recirculating scrubber as well and picked up the same pH benefit as you did.

One thing I did end up doing was installing an overfill sensor for the skimmer cup. Skimmers sometimes go nuts, and there are some real downsides to that when hooked up to a syphoning canister of soda lime. I got lucky once but didn't want to chance it again.

I bought this one. It has an optical sensor so it does the occasional False positive, but rarely.

 

[Hilltopreef]

I’ve read that. That’s why I’m letting the Skimmer effluent drain into the specimen container. No way to overflow the Skimmer that way. If I’m away and the Skimmer overflows for some reason it will fill up the spec container and then overflow that into the sump. Not a perfect outcome but better than the floor or letting the C02 scrubber suck up the Skimmer effluent.