KH Director

[scuzy]

Hi guys
Does it really matter if it is out by 0.5dkh from your other tester as long as it is consistent?
Personally 8.0 or 8.5 I don’t care about as long as it doesn’t swing.

Why is nobody else letting their unit do the harder work of controlling their dosing? You paid good money for something you are putting a very tight leash on. The product works. It’s a little fiddly to set up but it works.
I was surprised when I hit the limits for increasing and decreasing the doses automatically but that truly is the way our tanks use alkalinity. It’s not linear consumption.
My dosing had to increase 80% during the day and ecrease 80% at night to not swing.

I don't have a profilux so I can control my calcium reactor to put out more alk I mainly do two tests a day to see is the reading is consistent.

 

[Mortie31]

Hi guys
Does it really matter if it is out by 0.5dkh from your other tester as long as it is consistent?
Personally 8.0 or 8.5 I don’t care about as long as it doesn’t swing.

Why is nobody else letting their unit do the harder work of controlling their dosing? You paid good money for something you are putting a very tight leash on. The product works. It’s a little fiddly to set up but it works.
I was surprised when I hit the limits for increasing and decreasing the doses automatically but that truly is the way our tanks use alkalinity. It’s not linear consumption.
My dosing had to increase 80% during the day and ecrease 80% at night to not swing.

Could you post a picture of your graph to show us the swings your seeing, as my Alk is stable within ±0.2. DKH over 24 hrs but I rise my Alk 48 times a day to try to keep it constant. I didn’t think it would trigger dosing until a 1dkh deviation had happened or can this be reduced down to say 0.3dkh? Or are you getting a 1dkh swing during the day?

 

[greg 45]

I have everything working properly . Took a little time . My new question there is a box that states record measurement values and I cannot click on it. So I went into tools and show graphs ,that leads me to documents and ask for a file name. I tried a few and nothing any advice. I only have the stand alone doser and the kh director .
Thanks for the help

 

[scuzy]

Stand alone can't record. You need to wait for the update. They going to fix that.

 

[scuzy]

Finally the readings are spot on 8.9 director nyos is 9

 

[ZaneTer]

Hi

Could you post a picture of your graph to show us the swings your seeing, as my Alk is stable within ±0.2. DKH over 24 hrs but I rise my Alk 48 times a day to try to keep it constant. I didn’t think it would trigger dosing until a 1dkh deviation had happened or can this be reduced down to say 0.3dkh? Or are you getting a 1dkh swing during the day?

Hi Mortie
I guess I wasn’t clear. My alk stays very stable but only because I allow the KH Director to automatically adjust my dosing via adaptive control. I hope this explains what I mean?

 

[WWIII]

Hi

Hi Mortie
I guess I wasn’t clear. My alk stays very stable but only because I allow the KH Director to automatically adjust my dosing via adaptive control. I hope this explains what I mean?

How many tests are you doing per day?

I have mine set on 6 tests per day currently, with adaptive control 10% across the board. I dose 24x per day alk and calcium diy 2 part. Right now set at 6ml per dose.

 

[ZaneTer]

For the second part of your question Mortie; yes the unit can make adjustments on a smaller dkh value if it deviates from your set point. I have seen adjustments ranging from 1% to 80% depending on the time of day. I do want them to modify it and allow me to put in a 100% reduction. The current software limits are 80% adjustment either way. My fosters run 8x per day but only on the half hour so that chemicals have half an hour to stabilise before the next test is done.

 

[ZaneTer]

How many tests are you doing per day?

I have mine set on 6 tests per day currently, with adaptive control 10% across the board. I dose 24x per day alk and calcium diy 2 part. Right now set at 6ml per dose.

I started with the KH allowing it 10% also I quickly found that wasn’t enough.

 

[WWIII]

I started with the KH allowing it 10% also I quickly found that wasn’t enough.

That's what I'm thinking. I've typed in 50% twice and chickened out. Lol Just got it set up on Tuesday though.

Very exciting to see just how stable the kh director can keep alkalinity. Also cool to see how alk changes through the day, but it's really exciting how they have the control part set up!

 

[ZaneTer]

The really exciting bit will come with one of the upcoming myghl updates. You will be able to see a dosing trend, this will be the one that changes people’s minds and will hopefully give us a better understanding of exactly what is happening. I believe that we will be able to take the upcoming trends and apply them to other people’s tanks (that aren’t running monitors) and help them achieve a flat reading all day long. I plan on doing exactly this on my tank so that the Director should only end up making very small adjustments of less than 10%. Hopefully vinny and Matthias can give us an expected date for that to happen.

 

[scuzy]

I have calcium reactor so will need to see how this changes a carx

 

[ZaneTer]

It varies the pH inside the reactor but can only be used if you have a P4 and a pH probe. This is the route I will go down in about 3 months. Triton is costing me too much and yes my consumption has increased about 25% since using the Director. My coral growth speed has increased very nicely.

 

[Mortie31]

The really exciting bit will come with one of the upcoming myghl updates. You will be able to see a dosing trend, this will be the one that changes people’s minds and will hopefully give us a better understanding of exactly what is happening. I believe that we will be able to take the upcoming trends and apply them to other people’s tanks (that aren’t running monitors) and help them achieve a flat reading all day long. I plan on doing exactly this on my tank so that the Director should only end up making very small adjustments of less than 10%. Hopefully vinny and Matthias can give us an expected date for that to happen.

Is it varying both up and down or mainly just up as consumption increases, out of curiosity what do you think is causing such a large swing in your Alk? Is you tank new?

 

[ZaneTer]

The overall daily quantity has increased from 25ml to 32ml per day of each triton.
Honestly Mortie I don’t know what has caused it. I am away from home for 3 months at a time and my first thought was precipitation. My wife showed me a monti that was around 5” across has suddenly grown to 6” in around 4 weeks. That’s an astounding increase of just over 40%

The problem I have is at the same period I was last home ~4 weeks ago I also dosed phosphate as that had bottomed out. It could be that I was starving the corals and limiting growth but in the last 4 weeks growth has been spectacular. I have to wait until we get the updated myghl to be able to show that data of increased alk consumption.

I believe the corals are happier in a more stable environment and also they are not starved for PO4 anymore.

 

[ZaneTer]

Just in case I did not understand fully: at night the 4ml every 3hrs drops to 0.8ml every 3 hours and increases during the day to 7.2ml every 3hrs.
Does this help Mortie? Average daily consumption now 32ml.

 

[Ditto]

@ZaneTer mine is doing this also where it dosing more during the day then at night.

I have increased my dosing from 20ml to now to 35ml.

When I started I was kinda shocked that my Aklinity was not at 7 it actually came in at 6.2 I thought it was wrong because my Hanna checked was saying it was 7.3. I went and bought a ati and Red Sea test kit and I was surprised that both of them showed my alkalinity was between 6-7. So I said I increased the dosing over a course of a week to get it to stabilize back at 7 and let adaptive take over.

 

[ZaneTer]

@Ditto
Have you noticed an increased growth rate?
I can’t say it was conclusively the Director because I also added PO4 to my system at the same time. Hope you can let us know your findings.

 

[Mortie31]

Just in case I did not understand fully: at night the 4ml every 3hrs drops to 0.8ml every 3 hours and increases during the day to 7.2ml every 3hrs.
Does this help Mortie? Average daily consumption now 32ml.

Thank you really interesting, I’m glad you seeing so much growth, is the difference in dosing amounts during the day and night also matching your DKh readings? The only reason I’m asking is to understand, could you please put a screen shot of your Alk readings up so we can see, these swings.

 

[ZaneTer]

Mortie there is no alk swing any more. It’s dosing that amount to keep the alk level flat in the tank at roughly 8.5dkh.