Do you locked your ph at 6.5 for you calcium reactor ?

[acropora4u]

I have mine fluctuating between 6.51 and 6.9 so it turns on at 6.9 off at 6.5 but I don’t get much media ( reborn) being used up so I’m wondering if I should lock them both at 6.5?

 

[Sean Clark]

So IMO you have a few thing going on here.

First: You are using your visual observations of the media consumption
"but I don’t get much media ( reborn) being used up"
to try to justify weather or not you should make an adjustment to the pH of your Calcium reactor.

What are your parameters (Salinity Ca Alk Mg Nitrate Phosphate) and what size tank and what do you have in it? Photos are always nice.

Second: Your pH swing is way to wide.
How did you come up with a 0.39 pH differential to cycle your reactor on and off?
The pH scale is logarithmic. Basically that means that the difference between 1 and 2 is ten fold, the difference between 2 and 3 is ten fold and on and on...
Your swing of 6.9 to 6.51 is extremely wide. This is going to be melting your media very quickly on the low and barley scratching it on the high. There is going to be a lot of time in the middle where you will have fluctuating effluent. Pick a number and stay with it.

Do not measure performance on media consumption, use test kits to measure performance.

 

[Borat]

I have mine fluctuating between 6.51 and 6.9 so it turns on at 6.9 off at 6.5 but I don’t get much media ( reborn) being used up so I’m wondering if I should lock them both at 6.5?

Every media has certain recommended PH (manufacturer of media should provide that information). Some would melt at 7.0, some would require you to drive it to 6.0.

Statements such as " I don’t get much media being used up" are absolutely meaningless - in my calcium reactor I anticipate to use my media over 5-7 years or so, at this rate of usage - how can I tell if I use "much" or "not so much"?


Here's what I would do (ONLY to test that the calcium reactor is working correcly):
1. Check your media recommended PH, set PH range to a tighter level (0.1PH) and,
2. Once PH has settled around recommended level, test DKH of your effluent. Different media achieve different effluent DKH levels - check what should be a typical DKH for your media (it's anywhere between 30 and 60)..
3. If you achieve your target DKH of (let's use a specific figure that I achieve - with Rowalith media), say [40 DKH] by testing your effluent - it means the reactor works fine.

What kind of tank have you got and back to above: what is your tank target DKH and DKH consumption a day? How much CaRx effluent do you dose each day (e.g. I dose about 8L of CaRx effluent each day)?

 

[Borat]

No wonder you have problems keeping SPS - you need to become a bit more knowledgeable before having those nice (but difficult to keep) corals...
We all start as newbies - and I still consider myself as a newbie (after keeping a marine tank for about 2.5 years and having kept a freshwater planted tank for about 10 years)..