Integrating the Alkatronic, Apex and Dos for stable alkalinity AND pH.

[Brett S]

Maybe we need to set up a third dosing pump with baking soda to smooth it out even more

 

[Reefinmike]

Maybe we need to set up a third dosing pump with baking soda to smooth it out even more

I’ve thought about letting my alkatronic handle bicarbonate, it has a built in doser for small corrections.
I think for now +/- 0.05 daily swing will do... don’t want to throw too many variables in there.

Though my KOH did just arrive... K is sitting right at 375 so it does need addressing... just not nearly as much as that one dude did

 

[Brett S]

I keep staring at my pH value. It’s down to 8.02 and the apex is going to switch to lye soon. I‘m excited to see how it goes tonight.

 

[Reefinmike]

I keep staring at my pH value. It’s down to 8.02 and the apex is going to switch to lye soon. I‘m excited to see how it goes tonight.

I’m really curious to see how your system reacts switching to toggled dosing right off the bat. I wasn’t really impressed when I switched to all lye dosing initially. The pH definitely rose over the first week but the swings became huge and unpredictable. Toggled dosing has made a clear difference.

what’s your system volume and current dosing amount?

 

[Brett S]

what’s your system volume and current dosing amount?

Yeah, I’m very curious to see how it responds as well. I’ve got a 220G display tank, a 20G frag tank and maybe 60G in the sump, by the time you account for rock and sand and such, maybe 260G in the system.

The system is configured to dose about 88ml of soda ash a day, but I have trident controlled dosing enabled, so it can dose more or less based on the alkalinity demand. Typically it doses a bit more. In the last 24 hours it dosed 94ml.

The other thing that is working against me is that I have the system configured to dose more during daylight hours because the alkalinity demand is higher during the day. It is configured to dose 60ml between 11am and 11pm and only 28ml between 11pm and 11am. Again, though, the trident can bump that up or down by as much as 35%.

 

[Brett S]

And just as I posted that I noticed that my pH dropped to 7.99 and the apex switched to dosing lye as expected. It’s after midnight here, so I’ll probably fall asleep soon, but I’m very curious to see how my graphs will look in the morning.

 

[Brett S]

So far it looks like things are going well. You can see in the graph below that it took out the valley in the pH curve last night. I kept the change point low (it switches to lye at a pH of 8.00 or below) because I didn’t want to make big changes too quickly. I’ll see how it goes this weekend, when multiple people are in the house, because that’s when I typically suffer from very low pH, then I may try to slowly bump it up a little to raise the overall pH level.

I’m curious to see if the new peak this afternoon will be higher because it’s starting from a higher point this morning or if it will still peak at the normal level.

 

[Reefinmike]

So far it looks like things are going well. You can see in the graph below that it took out the valley in the pH curve last night. I kept the change point low (it switches to lye at a pH of 8.00 or below) because I didn’t want to make big changes too quickly. I’ll see how it goes this weekend, when multiple people are in the house, because that’s when I typically suffer from very low pH, then I may try to slowly bump it up a little to raise the overall pH level.

I’m curious to see if the new peak this afternoon will be higher because it’s starting from a higher point this morning or if it will still peak at the normal level.

Definitely a notable change! I wouldn’t expect it to peak a whole lot higher than normal. It looks like your daily swing is pretty tight already

 

[metzer]

Just following along, sounds interesting. I have the alkatronic and Apex system. would this type of Lye dosing working similar with a CaRx or would one also need the Soda Ash only?

 

[Brett S]

Just following along, sounds interesting. I have the alkatronic and Apex system. would this type of Lye dosing working similar with a CaRx or would one also need the Soda Ash only?

I suspect that it will really work better with a two part additive. The way it works is that soda ash and lye both provide alkalinity to the tank, but they have different effects on pH. The soda ash will raise the tank pH slightly and the lye will raise the tank pH more.

So the apex looks at the pH of the tank and if it is low then it doses lye. This will cover the alkalinity needs and also raise the pH. If the pH is not low then the apex will dose soda ash. This will also cover the alkalinity demands, but have less of an effect on the pH.

The problem with using it with a CaRx is that you are getting both calcium and alkalinity with your reactor. If you leave your reactor alone and just dose lye when the pH is low then your alkalinity levels will rise. If you slow down or stop your reactor and dose lye when the pH is low then the alkalinity will stay stable, but your calcium will go down.

 

[Reefinmike]

Just following along, sounds interesting. I have the alkatronic and Apex system. would this type of Lye dosing working similar with a CaRx or would one also need the Soda Ash only?

I’d imagine you would need CaCl to compliment the lye however soda ash would be unnecessary. Your calcium reactor acts as the cal/ alk additive when above a certain pH threshold. This method could be applied toward any system using a high pH impact additive vs low.

lye/soda ash
Soda ash/ bicarbonate
Lye/CaRx
Soda ash/carbocalcium
Kalkwasser/rodi

generally speaking, I think the lye/carx combo will be the least impressive of the bunch. You’re literally adding something(co2) to lower tank pH and chasing it with lye. Seems counter productive

 

[Brett S]

And looks like the pH has started to rise for the day. We crossed the 8.0 threshold and the apex switched back to soda ash as expected. I’m interested to see where it peaks this evening.

 

[Brett S]

Earlier I was just kidding when I suggested using baking soda as a third additive to smooth things out even more. However, as I’m thinking about it I think that maybe baking soda instead of soda ash might be ideal.

Looking at the graph, at night the valley is removed by the lye, but during the day the pH naturally rises because of all the photosynthesis going on in the tank. But during that time when the pH is naturally rising we are still adding soda ash, which also raises the pH (just not by as much as the lye does). I’m thinking that if we swap out the soda ash for baking soda the daily peaks won’t be as high since we won’t be adding as much to it with our additive. If the pH does fall during the day for some reason the apex can give it a dose or two of lye to boost it.

I think I will try this at some point, but not right away. I feel like I’ve made enough changes for now and I want to see how it goes with the lye before I make any additional changes. Also, I have like 14 pounds of unused soda ash on hand right now.

 

[Brett S]

On a side note, I was looking at all the spikes in your graph as compared to mine and wondering what that was all about, but then I remembered that you said that you were dosing upstream of your pH probe. I managed to get my dosing lines and probes configured so that I’m dosing downstream of the probe. I think that’s why my graph is smoother.

 

[Reefinmike]

On a side note, I was looking at all the spikes in your graph as compared to mine and wondering what that was all about, but then I remembered that you said that you were dosing upstream of your pH probe. I managed to get my dosing lines and probes configured so that I’m dosing downstream of the probe. I think that’s why my graph is smoother.

I think part of it has to do with how zoomed in some graphs are. I can manipulate the data and graph view so it looks like I want it to... just like covid scientists

I wouldn’t think your tank would be a candidate for bicarb unless you had swings breaking 8.4ish. I may start blending my additives after I’m sure I have it nailed down, maybe 2/3 lye with 1/3 soda ash for low pH and 2/3 soda ash with 1/3 bicarb for high pH. But then you have the issue of bicarbonate’s low solubility...

 

[Brett S]

I think part of it has to do with how zoomed in some graphs are. I can manipulate the data and graph view so it looks like I want it to... just like covid scientists

even zoomed way in I’m not seeing spikes. I’m not sure it’s a problem, I was just kinda curious about it.

 

[Brett S]

I wouldn’t think your tank would be a candidate for bicarb unless you had swings breaking 8.4ish. I may start blending my additives after I’m sure I have it nailed down, maybe 2/3 lye with 1/3 soda ash for low pH and 2/3 soda ash with 1/3 bicarb for high pH. But then you have the issue of bicarbonate’s low solubility...

Yeah, I guess this rabbit hole just keeps getting deeper and deeper the more you think about it.

 

[Brett S]

Actually, looking back at my graph, if I zoom in to a couple of days ago I can see little spikes. This was before I moved my dosing tubes so I was dosing soda ash upstream of my pH probe.

 

[Reefinmike]

Actually, looking back at my graph, if I zoom in to a couple of days ago I can see little spikes. This was before I moved my dosing tubes so I was dosing soda ash upstream of my pH probe.

I think it also has lot to do with your logging frequency and how it lines up with your dosing. I think default is 10 or 15 minute intervals and I have mine set to 5 minutes.

when I first started this project I was using profiles set to run every 15 minutes. I noticed when I added a three minute defer all the spikes went away. Now that i’m using tdata the spikes being logged are less predictable.

 

[Brett S]

I think it also has lot to do with your logging frequency and how it lines up with your dosing. I think default is 10 or 15 minute intervals and I have mine set to 5 minutes.

I didn’t even realize that changing the logging frequency was an option. Looks like mine is set to the default of 10 min.