Easy DOS it, CARX with DOS and Carbon Doser

Breadman03 · Jul 14, 2018

So, I’ve spent far too long as a laissez faire reefer. As a result, I’ve never really had success. I took Triton out for a little bit, but decided that they would be quite costly long term and I didn’t want to keep having issues with consistent supply and I had a calcium reactor laying around with a broken solenoid and a Watson Marlow with an unresponsive keypad.

I decided to repurpose one of my DOS heads for feeding the CARX and ordered a Carbon Doser regulator. I want an @alanle regulator but it was a bit more than the wife would let me part with and I didn’t feel like scouring the web looking for deals on components.

I set it up with the DOS pulling water out of the reactor and putting the effluent into my fuge. The Carbon Doser is set to one bubble every ten seconds and my Apex keeps my pH between 6.7 and 6.85, though it drops lower because I have very low demand right now and I have very low flow through the reactor. I’m am currently keeping the pH set and am adjusting my DOS speed to correct fluctuations in alkalinity.

I noticed a few changes pretty quickly: the macro in my fuge really took off and coralline began spreading everywhere. If you check my graphs, you can see where I turned up my DOS too far and the corresponding alk spike slowed coralline growth. I’m now back on track to keep alk at about 7.5-8.0.

Feel free to fire away with questions. My reef is okay right now, but I can’t claim much success.

jsker · Jul 17, 2018

Let see we can gets some feedback and questions

Breadman03 · Sep 5, 2018

After a few weeks of working with this, I've been getting much better at maintaning alkalinity stability while watching my daily consumption increase. I assume that the increased uptake is due to the stability allowing my livestock to get healthier and begin to grow more rapidly. When I first set this up, this calculator showed my daily consumption as nonexistent. I am now at 0.3 dkh/day. I know that isn't nearly so much as some really nice and mature tanks, but I'll take the improvement.

My latest settings are 45 liters of effluent per day at 14.5 dkh. I just decreased my pH setpoint slightly to increase my effluent dkh. I'd like to get my effluent alkalinity into the mid-20's.