Is My PH a Problem?

BubbleAlgaeFarmer

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Sorry, I'm sure you've all seen these posts a million times. But based on the snippet below, would you say that my PH is fine? My tank has always shown the cycle as shown below. My reef seems fine, so I think I'm ok, but i've only doing this a year so i could be missing signs of distress that everyone else might notice. TYIA.


PH.png
 
Chasing PH is a fools errand , but maybe see if there are things limiting it. Do the fresh air PH test , but if there’s nothing wrong as you say there’s no reason to change anything
 
Sorry, I'm sure you've all seen these posts a million times. But based on the snippet below, would you say that my PH is fine? My tank has always shown the cycle as shown below. My reef seems fine, so I think I'm ok, but i've only doing this a year so i could be missing signs of distress that everyone else might notice. TYIA.


PH.png
Keep up with alkalinity, pH will take care of itself. A healthy IndoPacific reef has fluctuating pH from 8.2 to 7.8. At night time when pH drops, oxygen depletion is a much more important parameter.
 
Your lights-out pH is low enough to be of some concern, but not so low that it merits a concerted effort to change it. Your reef's health is the best barometer, and if corals seem healthy and colorful with some growth, it's not a problem.

Chasing pH with additives basically never works long-term, so if you do want to raise your pH in the future, your options are:

First, get a CO2 scrubber for your skimmer. CO2 leads to the formation of carbonic acid, which lowers your pH. Many homes are actually quite high in ambient CO2, so it's not at all unusual for a CO2 scrubber to make a noticeable difference.

Second, add a refugium or algae turf scrubber to your sump on a reverse photoperiod. Photosynthesis during your tank's normal "sleep" period will take CO2 out of the water and replace it with O2, raising the floor on your pH and allowing for higher pH levels.

Third, find other ways to increase coral photosynthesis. Increased daytime photosynthesis will increase your pH as well.

Fourth, find a way to pull in outside air (presumably higher in O2) to feed your protein skimmer. With less CO2 entering your water, your pH will naturally rise.

Having said all that, chasing pH is a fool's errand. It's not a direct parameter (like, for example, calcium), but rather the result of all the chemistry going on in your tank. There are tons of inputs that impact your pH level, and there are only a few that we can directly impact.
 
Thank you for the input. I have for the most part, not paid attention to PH because I knew it would drive me crazy and my reef looked ok. I have a refugium with a reverse photo period, which has reduced my nighttime valleys a little bit. I just increased my fuge run time because i need to lower nutrients a little bit more. Will see if it helps with the PH.
 
I used to poo poo chasing pH. In my SPS tank I was running 7.6-7.9. I was content and coral looked good. I added a skimmer just because I had a few laying here and my pH increased to 8.1 -8.3 and occasionally 8.4 I started the skimmer on 8/12 and was dosing 30ml AFR to keep my alk around 8.5. Since then coral growth has been very good and I've had to increase my AFR from 30ml to 60ml a day currently.
Now I'm thinking about looking into dosing kalk at night to try and keep my overnight low from dropping so much.

rabbit-hole-alice-in-wonderland.gif
 
If it were me, I’d first ensure the pH is accurate by recalibrating with new fluids.

If the pH 7.6-7.7 persisted, I would take some action to prevent it from dropping that low. What actions are best depend on many details of the tank and home.
 
Sorry, I'm sure you've all seen these posts a million times. But based on the snippet below, would you say that my PH is fine? My tank has always shown the cycle as shown below. My reef seems fine, so I think I'm ok, but i've only doing this a year so i could be missing signs of distress that everyone else might notice. TYIA.


PH.png
I should have known this but did not, you really should calibrate your probe once a quarter or so, so I would definitely start there and make sure you're working with good results.
 

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