Increase pH without skimmer. How?

[HuduVudu]

Thanks, now I'm down a rabbit hole of how to monitor CO2 with an Apex. Most cost-effective solution would be an NDIR sensor from Adafruit with a D-A converter to convert the data to analog 0-5V, which can then be set up as a "probe" in the Apex. Would cost about the same as the meter type you linked, but with the bonus of Apex integration and ability to overlay Co2 data with tank pH data (or any other Apex data).

A good rabbit hole to enter and explore.

The problem is two fold. First the asymetrical movement of CO2 in and out of the water column. Second, the lag time for this to occur. There are many many factors that impact this process, and some can come out of left field. That said the imperical knowledge can be worth it's weight in gold.

Good luck and most of all have fun on your project. Because at the end of the day this is a hobby and the goal is to have fun.

 

[gbru316]

A good rabbit hole to enter and explore.

The problem is two fold. First the asymetrical movement of CO2 in and out of the water column. Second, the lag time for this to occur. There are many many factors that impact this process, and some can come out of left field. That said the imperical knowledge can be worth it's weight in gold.

Good luck and most of all have fun on your project. Because at the end of the day this is a hobby and the goal is to have fun.

Oh absolutely.

I've definitely noticed significant lag between changing scrubber media and pH rise. I've observed the asymmetric rate of CO2 transfer in the water column -- pH is quick to drop when the scrubber media is close to exhaustion, but slow to rise. It almost seems to require a "kick" via biological processes (associated with daylight) to climb the hill to CO2 max with new media.

I've also found it interesting that there seems toe a 4 hour lag between lights-on and pH rise. Whether that's because lights need to be supplying a minimum level of PUR or whether that's just the nature of the biological processes (or, more likely, a bit of both), I'm not 100% sure. But if I poked around at the data and equipment enough I'm sure I could uncover more questions than answers

 

[KonradTO]

Gotta add a lot more than you think with the silicates. You need to maintain above 3ppm to trigger a diatom bloom that would starve them out.

How often do you dose that 1ppm ?

 

[KonradTO]

. What's your phosphate at?

Its around 0.06. I am dosing at the moment in order to slowly reach .1 so I won't get dinos again.

 

[ZombieEngineer]

How often do you dose that 1ppm ?

If you're adding 1ppm, probably daily for like a week if your tank is pretty mature with a lot of sponges before you would actually hit 3ppm. Only way to know for sure is to keep adding until you see diatoms in the microscope then back of to every other day until the dinos are gone or to use a test kit to maintain the level there until the dinos are gone.

 

[KonradTO]

Oh absolutely.

I've definitely noticed significant lag between changing scrubber media and pH rise. I've observed the asymmetric rate of CO2 transfer in the water column -- pH is quick to drop when the scrubber media is close to exhaustion, but slow to rise. It almost seems to require a "kick" via biological processes (associated with daylight) to climb the hill to CO2 max with new media.

I've also found it interesting that there seems toe a 4 hour lag between lights-on and pH rise. Whether that's because lights need to be supplying a minimum level of PUR or whether that's just the nature of the biological processes (or, more likely, a bit of both), I'm not 100% sure. But if I poked around at the data and equipment enough I'm sure I could uncover more questions than answers

What I observed in my tank is that pH start to drop when lights ramp down and rise back again when lights ramp up (I have 1h ramp)

 

[KonradTO]

If you're adding 1ppm, probably daily for like a week if your tank is pretty mature with a lot of sponges before you would actually hit 3ppm. Only way to know for sure is to keep adding until you see diatoms in the microscope then back of to every other day until the dinos are gone or to use a test kit to maintain the level there until the dinos are gone.

Yeah would be great to properly test but the Hanna checker for silicate is out of question for me atm. I will try to add every other day then and keep adding more if I see no diatoms, so I don't overdose (my tank is less than 12 months old)
Thanks for the tips!

 

[KonradTO]

Hi all,
Short update. Since the silicate dosing seemed to slow down the dino growth on the sand, and I started seeing also some ostreopsis now and then, I decided to go for another blackout to weaken them even further.
This time I am monitoring pH, and I noticed how low pH plummets when doing the blackout. I tested a glass of tank water with the cup aeration experiment and I got a pH of 8.1!
So basically this demonstrates quite clearly that my tank has very poor gas exchange, probably due to the acrylic lid and lack of skimmer.
So, in the end I convinced myself to get a cheap skimmer (FZONE amazon 80$ chinese skimmer). I basically flush the skimmate directly in the sump and keep the skimmate as wet as possible (it fill the cup in less than 30s). In this way the water remains as oxygenated as possible, and I am drawing air from outside.

As you can see, this seems to work pretty well. pH went from 7.7 to 7.85 in 24h, and it's still climbing. I will stop the blackout this evening after 3 days, I am curious to see how this translates in pH levels once lights are on. Hopefully this is the end of me playing around with tank parameters and finally get rid of Dinos.

ps. you can see in the pH graph that at some point the pH at night goes even lower than usual. This is due to increased day/night ratio, as I was slowly increasing the amount of time my blue lights are on.
As you can see, while it's true that the pH during day gets higher, also the pH at nighttime gets much lower with increased day/night ratio.. quite interesting, as I would have expected the minimum pH value to increase a bit due to less time for cellular respiration and more time for photosynthesis.