Ty Hamatake
Hi, my name is Ty and I'm a Reefer...
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2016
- Messages
- 1,938
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*DISCLAMER* I am super bored in my hotel room so this could get long. I'll make sure to add a TL;DR at the end just in case it gets to be too much.
My tank has been up and running for well over a year now, set up in Feb 2016. After the initial setup I tested diligently, pH being by far what I tested for the most (I had a nifty new little Hanna checker and I liked using it). I knew it wasn't optimal, but I would usually get results around 7.8. This was testing in the evening and every once in a while before I went to bed after the lights had been out for a bit. I would have preferred higher numbers, though I was satisfied with "acceptable". Fast forward several months and I had finally decided to pull the trigger on a controller, the APEX. Now I had the ability to check on my tank anytime I wanted from anywhere I wanted (maybe a blessing and a curse). After getting everything calibrated and set I decided, "What the heck I'll enable these cool text and email alerts". Well... let's just say after about the 10th text in the middle of the night I put my phone on silent and went to bed. This is about what my first week looked like.
Needless to say, I felt like I needed to do something. I was already dosing kalkwasser and leaving a window open all day or running an airline outside were not options for me. Next choice despite my better judgement (don't hate me)... pH buffer. One of the main problems with this was that I travel for work and my wife and I have agreed that her involvement with the tank while I'm gone is limited to feeding, barring the occasional emergency. Long story short this one didn't work out. Here's kind of what a week looked like when I would leave halfway through (ha ha, you can see that I got sick enough of the alerts that I lowered the alert level to 7.75). Also, at this time I was really only trying to keep it above 7.8 not really sure why.
At this point I was pretty frustrated. I wasn't getting anywhere near the coral growth that I knew I could. It didn't help that the BRS team had gotten SPS in their 160 around the same time I did in my tank, so I got to sit back and watch their frags grow into nice little colonies while mine sat close to stagnant. I had to find a better more reliable fix for my problem. I remembered reading a little about people using CO2 scrubbers, but for some reason I hadn't actually considered using one before. I don't know if I thought they wouldn't work or what, but once I decided to it seemed so right. I ordered the BRS universal CO2 Scrubber and a 750 ml canister of the Two Little Fishies CO2 media (advertised to last 6-8 week on a 50-100 gallon tank [I try to set everything in my tank up to last at least two weeks due to my traveling so I thought this was perfect]).
Week One Scrubbing
Off to a solid start! You can pretty much track down the hour I hooked that puppy up. I was super excited at first. About two days in I took a look at the canister... almost 1/3 solid purple. "Ok, maybe it burns quick at first then slows WAY down" is what I told myself. Day seven it was at one half, day 10 now it was at 3/4! "Oh it must just be like the outer layer and it works its way in..." unfortunately I was wrong on all counts.
Week Two Scrubbing
As you can see the high was gone as quickly as it came. I thought that it might be the media so I ordered the BRS brand this time. While I was waiting for the order to arrive I did a little more research and came to the conclusion that the faster than normal exhaustion rate was probably due to my massively oversized skimmer, Skimz Octa 165i on my little 75 gallon. After I got the new media I adjusted my intake and crossed my fingers.
Despite my efforts this time was worse. My pH was far less stable and it only lasted nine days! Time for another refill! One thing I had noticed this time was how quickly the canister would dry out (something I didn't think to check before). This round I tried to "refill" the canister with RO/DI water every two days.
Finally making progress!
Alright cool, I FINALLY have results that I'm happy with... except one thing. The whole refill-every-two-days thing didn't fit into my two week maintenance free minimum. Here's what I came up with. Lol I know it's crude, but it works. An old bottle of AcroPower, a skimmer silencer, and some tubing. Now the air intake has to run through the bottle that I can fill with water. As that water evaporates it runs through the scrubber intake keeping the media from drying out.
Here's the last couple weeks running this current setup.
Now for the skeptics. You may say that my system finally just stabilized or with the nicer weather the doors and windows are open more now (which I do admit they are). But here's what happens when an idiot cleans the skimmer and forgets to reattach the scrubber line. The downward spike is when I calibrated my probe (done at the same time as cleaning the skimmer). That marker was the first time my pH hit 7.8 in several weeks and as you can see it climbed right back up after I reconnected it.
As a side note, the hump above 16 May peaks at 8.3 (a first for my tank!!). I had changed the media out from BRS to the one pictured below on the 13th and when I left on the 15th it only had maybe a 1/4" inch layer of exhausted media!
As of right now my corals are finally starting to grow, I am finally beginning to get coralline algae growth (something I’ve wanted from day one), and I actually had to increase my lime water concentration to keep up with the alkalinity and calcium demands that I can only guess are a result of coral growth due to a proper and stable pH!
TL;DR (I really wouldn't blame you)
I struggled with low pH for several months and finally decided to give CO2 scrubbing a try. Well after some trial and error, it ended up working wonderfully. If you’re going to implement this I would suggest you heed the advice of keeping the media in a humid environment and remember that the more air your skimmer is pulling in the faster the media is going to exhaust. I know this sounds all very common sense, but if I would’ve paid a little more attention I could’ve saved time and money.
My tank has been up and running for well over a year now, set up in Feb 2016. After the initial setup I tested diligently, pH being by far what I tested for the most (I had a nifty new little Hanna checker and I liked using it). I knew it wasn't optimal, but I would usually get results around 7.8. This was testing in the evening and every once in a while before I went to bed after the lights had been out for a bit. I would have preferred higher numbers, though I was satisfied with "acceptable". Fast forward several months and I had finally decided to pull the trigger on a controller, the APEX. Now I had the ability to check on my tank anytime I wanted from anywhere I wanted (maybe a blessing and a curse). After getting everything calibrated and set I decided, "What the heck I'll enable these cool text and email alerts". Well... let's just say after about the 10th text in the middle of the night I put my phone on silent and went to bed. This is about what my first week looked like.
Needless to say, I felt like I needed to do something. I was already dosing kalkwasser and leaving a window open all day or running an airline outside were not options for me. Next choice despite my better judgement (don't hate me)... pH buffer. One of the main problems with this was that I travel for work and my wife and I have agreed that her involvement with the tank while I'm gone is limited to feeding, barring the occasional emergency. Long story short this one didn't work out. Here's kind of what a week looked like when I would leave halfway through (ha ha, you can see that I got sick enough of the alerts that I lowered the alert level to 7.75). Also, at this time I was really only trying to keep it above 7.8 not really sure why.
At this point I was pretty frustrated. I wasn't getting anywhere near the coral growth that I knew I could. It didn't help that the BRS team had gotten SPS in their 160 around the same time I did in my tank, so I got to sit back and watch their frags grow into nice little colonies while mine sat close to stagnant. I had to find a better more reliable fix for my problem. I remembered reading a little about people using CO2 scrubbers, but for some reason I hadn't actually considered using one before. I don't know if I thought they wouldn't work or what, but once I decided to it seemed so right. I ordered the BRS universal CO2 Scrubber and a 750 ml canister of the Two Little Fishies CO2 media (advertised to last 6-8 week on a 50-100 gallon tank [I try to set everything in my tank up to last at least two weeks due to my traveling so I thought this was perfect]).
Week One Scrubbing
Off to a solid start! You can pretty much track down the hour I hooked that puppy up. I was super excited at first. About two days in I took a look at the canister... almost 1/3 solid purple. "Ok, maybe it burns quick at first then slows WAY down" is what I told myself. Day seven it was at one half, day 10 now it was at 3/4! "Oh it must just be like the outer layer and it works its way in..." unfortunately I was wrong on all counts.
Week Two Scrubbing
As you can see the high was gone as quickly as it came. I thought that it might be the media so I ordered the BRS brand this time. While I was waiting for the order to arrive I did a little more research and came to the conclusion that the faster than normal exhaustion rate was probably due to my massively oversized skimmer, Skimz Octa 165i on my little 75 gallon. After I got the new media I adjusted my intake and crossed my fingers.
Despite my efforts this time was worse. My pH was far less stable and it only lasted nine days! Time for another refill! One thing I had noticed this time was how quickly the canister would dry out (something I didn't think to check before). This round I tried to "refill" the canister with RO/DI water every two days.
Finally making progress!
Alright cool, I FINALLY have results that I'm happy with... except one thing. The whole refill-every-two-days thing didn't fit into my two week maintenance free minimum. Here's what I came up with. Lol I know it's crude, but it works. An old bottle of AcroPower, a skimmer silencer, and some tubing. Now the air intake has to run through the bottle that I can fill with water. As that water evaporates it runs through the scrubber intake keeping the media from drying out.
Here's the last couple weeks running this current setup.
Now for the skeptics. You may say that my system finally just stabilized or with the nicer weather the doors and windows are open more now (which I do admit they are). But here's what happens when an idiot cleans the skimmer and forgets to reattach the scrubber line. The downward spike is when I calibrated my probe (done at the same time as cleaning the skimmer). That marker was the first time my pH hit 7.8 in several weeks and as you can see it climbed right back up after I reconnected it.
As a side note, the hump above 16 May peaks at 8.3 (a first for my tank!!). I had changed the media out from BRS to the one pictured below on the 13th and when I left on the 15th it only had maybe a 1/4" inch layer of exhausted media!
As of right now my corals are finally starting to grow, I am finally beginning to get coralline algae growth (something I’ve wanted from day one), and I actually had to increase my lime water concentration to keep up with the alkalinity and calcium demands that I can only guess are a result of coral growth due to a proper and stable pH!
TL;DR (I really wouldn't blame you)
I struggled with low pH for several months and finally decided to give CO2 scrubbing a try. Well after some trial and error, it ended up working wonderfully. If you’re going to implement this I would suggest you heed the advice of keeping the media in a humid environment and remember that the more air your skimmer is pulling in the faster the media is going to exhaust. I know this sounds all very common sense, but if I would’ve paid a little more attention I could’ve saved time and money.
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