Kalk slurry aeration

[Garf]

…and they dismissed at my (our) attempts at REAL science ….
:p:p …. hopefully this will save us some money
thanks for inventing/improvising/posting

Getting another tank Thursday and gonna feed it with this lamp eventually. I’ve put 710 grms of kalk in the bubbler which should last a few months. I’ve put it on a timer so it don’t run in the main hours of photosynthesis. For some unknown reason, or my imagination, increasing the slurry concentration, pH at night is rock solid. Waiting for BRS to contact me.

Edit - the wife has got a new tank coming Thursday :)

 

[Garf]

Thinking about it, I may have extracted most CO2, not withstanding the addition of CO2 from the local atmosphere. Guess I’ll find out in the winter when we are all shut up.

 

[Garf]

A chemically related post this time, lol.

What’s most important, length or girth? Bubble travel time or surface agitation?

Let’s find out. 900 mls water, 100 grammes bargain calcium hydroxide in a coke bottle. Surface area is almost identical to the bubble lamp (can be more accurate later depending on the results) however the fluid in the lamp is 900 mm deep, and in the bottle it’s 140 mm. Bubble size should be similar.

I’ll plug it in tonight and monitor the pH trend as I have it imprinted in my head now.

 

[Garf]

And my next thread to be entitled “ How to treat a tank that has a massive kalk overdose, pH 10.2, idiot”

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I think the bubble size will impact the answer.

Very small bubbles will rise more slowly and are more easily depleted of CO2 due to the high surface area to volume, giving bubbles the edge over the bulk air/water surface.

Larger bubbles have less surface area and so compete less favorably with the air/water bulk surface.

 

[Garf]

I think the bubble size will impact the answer.

Very small bubbles will rise more slowly and are more easily depleted of CO2 due to the high surface area to volume, giving bubbles the edge over the bulk air/water surface.

Larger bubbles have less surface area and so compete less favorably with the air/water bulk surface.

Well the wife isn’t happy about me doing this tonight as most of the first batch autosiphoned into the tank because I put the IN pipe where the OUT pipe should have gone, and visa versa. I Used 38 mls of neat hydrochloric on it to bring it all back in line in a 200 litre tank. I guess if photosynthetic pH increase tomorrow is low, Ive screwed the corals up. Hey ho, fish are OK. I just blamed you for egging me on, so on we go :)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Ah, the joys of being an experimental scientist. lol

 

[fryman]

Oops, sorry to hear about the mistake. But this idea seems genius to me. Tagging along

 

[Garf]

Oops, sorry to hear about the mistake. But this idea seems genius to me. Tagging along

Unfortunately the coke bottle version did nothing. I’m beginning to think the large bubble lamp version just tipped the scales in my favour, along with my regular kalkwasser additions. I think a scientist would call it insignificant. I’ve promised the wife I ain’t gonna tick around with stuff again. The contents of this tank are being moved to a new tank soon. I was gonna add some sodium hydroxide pearls to see what happened but the wife would kill me. :)

 

[Garf]

Tank aerated with big bubble lamp, without any kalkwasser or high pH Alk additions of any kind has normalised at pH 8.2 to 8.3 it seems.

And the corner of the room where the new tank is going has the perfect spot for a bubble lamp, lol.

Something also to bare in mind - if the bubble lamp is turned off for more than a day, and there’s loads of settling in the tube (I’ve gone to the extreme, obviously), the air pump may struggle to burst through.

 

[Garf]

Modification applied;

No idea how long this will take to block up, not long I’m guessing but I’ve fed it through the top so it’s easy to take out and clean, maybe, as long as it don’t fall apart whilst doing so. Bubble lamp is now almost silent with a lot of tiny foaming fizzing bubbles.

 

[Garf]

After 20hrs of use, no sign of blockage. Yesterday the tank room was shut up, air conditioned, 3 human adults, 4 little dogs and tank inhabitants for 4 hrs and the pH Maintained at an indicated 8.38 (about 15% of normal kalk additions included). There was a slight drop of 0.05pH when the Sunday roast was being cooked with lots of gas being consumed for 2 hrs, but that soon rose again when the room was opened up as the outside temperature dropped.
Decided to see what was going on at night in the tank. Normally there is one, maybe two acro frags with extended polyps. Last night, all of them were extended and I have not seen that before. My Alk consumption does appear to have increased somewhat, so I’ve recalibrated the doser and will keep an eye on that also.
It does appear that most of my Alkalinity is consumed at night which would agree with other reports I’ve read, now if that’s coral or coralline, dunno.
I have noticed larger than normal bands of death around the bases of some of the corals which suggests to me they are trying to spread faster.
There is a lot of talk of extra calcification at higher pH but is there a benefit to the living tissue? Maybe, I guess.

Edit - For what it’s worth my pH is wobbling between 8.35 and 8.4 generally.

 

[fryman]

Are you controlling this at all or does it just run 24/7? Have you tried controlling it to maintain a steady pH, say just run at night to maintain pH of 8.3? Might have to run it a few min every hour to prevent blockage when lights are on.

 

[Garf]

Are you controlling this at all or does it just run 24/7? Have you tried controlling it to maintain a steady pH, say just run at night to maintain pH of 8.3? Might have to run it a few min every hour to prevent blockage when lights are on.

Yes, i could do that, and in fact did start turning it off in the day but had to de clog it a few times. However with this fine aerator im running 24/7 now. I've got a pH meter that triggers an outlet at a high set point (No fancy tank controller here). My next move is to get it to trigger another small air pump (fed with room air) that stalls out the draw from the reactor, but I'm not concerned at current values. As you say, clogging may still be an issue so I want to leave it running for now.

 

[Garf]

Update - Bubble stone not clogged as of yet, pH maintains around 8.35 (with scheduled kalk additions to maintain 8ish DKH). I’ve started turning the bubbler off during the day again, and all seems well. Change of plan with rehoming all my stuff into the new tank, the wife is keeping it for softies and LPS. However she has agreed I can apply this bubble thing to her tank purely because she has seen how healthy my little corals and fish look. So, I have a new test subject;

 

[Garf]

Observation - yesterday the pH of the tank dipped. Changed the bubble stone to see if it was that. I noticed a thick sludge around the bubble air interface around the bubble lamp and on the filter floss covering the air output hole, which I’ve not noticed before. I suppose this may be an indicator that the solution is spent, guess I’ll find out next time. This morning pH of the tank had dipped to its lowest level for 3 weeks (8.25), so I threw away my 75 pence (guessing 1 U.S. Dollar) worth of apparently spent calcium hydroxide with a quick hosing down and reset with 500 grammes this time of cheapo kalk powder mixed with tapwater, as previous.

 

[Garf]

My pH plummeted to 8.1 last night, turns out one of my DIY fittings from the air pump had blown off. I’ve been using a DIY bubble ring for the last week which has apparently blocked, so I’ve made another one with 1.5mm diameter holes this time. Runs almost silent. I’ve not took a pic of my version 1, it was poor even by my very low standards :)
Here is V 2;

 

[taricha]

Was thinking about this and conceptually it's just two mixing areas with shared air between them. One where air exchanges with kalk slurry and gets CO2 purged, and one where the same air gets mixed with tank water and pulls CO2 out.
I haven't quite come up with an implementation simple and low fuss enough for me to try to put on my system.

 

[phxreefer]

Any update to this?

 

[Garf]

Any update to this?

Still quietly chugging away. Ph hangs around 8.4 at present, sometimes down to 8.35 at night, up to 8.45 during lights on. If my previous consumption of the solution is anything to go by, the 500grammes of builders lime I’ve got bubbling away should be consumed in another day or two (2 weeks ish). I’m waiting to see if I get the skimmer sludge effect that I noticed last time it was depleted.