KH Director

[scuzy]

I have a lab grade graduate cylinder as my dad makes these for labs so they are very accurate. I'll just stick to the ml/min readings.

 

[ZaneTer]

Guys you are not trying to measure a weight but instead a volume. At ~25’c 1gram of RODI equals 1ml for all intents and purposes. You must not use salt water for the calibration via scale.

 

[WWIII]

Guys you are not trying to measure a weight but instead a volume. At ~25’c 1gram of RODI equals 1ml for all intents and purposes. You must not use salt water for the calibration via scale.

That makes sense.

On another note. I got a Lamotte alk test kit today. It tests my alk at the 7.8 range. The kh director reads 7.9. My hanna is reading 8.6. I think I'll just stick with the kh director and use lamotte as backup. The kh director has adjusted my alk up from 7.6 to 7.9. I now set it to move up to 8.2 dkh where I would like to keep the alkalinity.

 

[ZaneTer]

Excellent WWIII
I must admit I bumped mine up too. When I started my dkh was measuring around 7 on the Director and now I run mine at 8.5 and I’m very happy.

 

[scuzy]

To bad it's not as easy to do a calcium reactor controls. Need a controller controllable peristaltic pump to do that

 

[ZaneTer]

I’m sorry scuzy but is easy. Your KH Director will vary the pH setpoint within your reactor to achieve the desired dkh. You have absolutely no need for a peristaltic pump but you must have a P3 or P4 connected with a pH inside the reactor.
In fact this is the method I will be changing over to when I next get home in either May or August.

 

[dragon99]

Guys you are not trying to measure a weight but instead a volume. At ~25’c 1gram of RODI equals 1ml for all intents and purposes. You must not use salt water for the calibration via scale.

Well, RODI is probably easier because it's density is .9982g/ml (it's 1 @ 4c), but there's certainly no reason I can't calibrate with saltwater since I know it's density also, 1.025g/ml. For the reagent, at the volume we are measuring (<5ml) the density of RODI is near enough to be the same.

All that said, I'm not bothering to re-run RODI thru all the lines just to get another tiny bit of accuracy because I'm lazy. You are right that the for someone just setting it up using RODI to calibrate is the way to go.

 

[ZaneTer]

I’m lazy too dragon

 

[scuzy]

I’m sorry scuzy but is easy. Your KH Director will vary the pH setpoint within your reactor to achieve the desired dkh. You have absolutely no need for a peristaltic pump but you must have a P3 or P4 connected with a pH inside the reactor.
In fact this is the method I will be changing over to when I next get home in either May or August.

You can only vary the pH so far before it turns to mush. You need to adjust the efluent rate as well to catch up to demands.

 

[ZaneTer]

True but you should have already setup your reactor to be in tune with your system, the Director will only make small changes to the pH at amounts that you control. It absolutely should not be plummeting your pH to 5.0 or anything ridiculous. That would be operator error entirely. I disagree that you would necessarily have to adjust your effluent rate although it may be necessary if you have an undersized reactor.

Hypothetically if you were to use the controller and you upped the effluent rate the controller would alter the pH to compensate. You define the limits.

 

[scuzy]

I'll have to look into this as not I have the right pH set for my reactor and it's been steady with consumption.

 

[ZaneTer]

Out of curiosity what pH are you running at with what media?

 

[scuzy]

6.5 with reborn. I was pushing 120ml/min at pH 6.3 with arm coarse media could barely keep all above 8dkh. after switching I'm getting 8.6dkh and only need to do 25ml/min.

 

[ZaneTer]

Thank you very much for your reply, I’m going to use Seachem reef reactor but I haven’t heard much from anyone else using it.

 

[ZaneTer]

I’ll be setting my pH lower limit to around 6.2 and then judge it from there but I am hoping to have it dialled in at around 6.5-6.7

Triton is costing too much so time for reactor again.

 

[scuzy]

For some reason it's not melting the arm coarse. Reborn is better media. Dead coral skeleton is better than no artificial I guess.

 

[dragon99]

My setup, still have to connect the alk pump tonight.

 

[Ditto]

@dragon99 Nice setup, can I ask what camera is that? Have you been able to get your camera to work in the MYGHL Website?

 

[dragon99]

@dragon99 Nice setup, can I ask what camera is that? Have you been able to get your camera to work in the MYGHL Website?

It's a Foscam FI9821W. Although, I'm using it with an Apex.... Works great in Fusion, so I'd assume no problem with GHL.

 

[Dawsokj1988]

I'm perplexed. I'm getting this 1/2 inch wide air gap in my reagent tube almost daily and I can't figure out where it's coming from. It's always in the same spot in the tube and I spent over 2 hours yesterday running manual tests to try and find the source. The air gap did not appear while performing manual tests. I'm 99% sure it's not coming from the reagent bottle, as the bubble is located in the tube between the pump and the KHD director. It's only appearing when the automated test runs in the morning. Any ideas, besides camping out for the automated tests and watching closely? It cannot be replicated via manual tests.