Lessons learned. Kalk Over Dose.

[rocko918]

oh man, Disaster averted! I got an email from my ac3 that my ph was at 8.9 which is really high! i knew what it was, kalk over dose. When down stairs when i got home from work and the tank was completely white. My float switch got stuck in the "on" position. But good thing is i have the other float switch high in the trash can of RO, so it only added 10 to 15 gallons of kalk water, So in a system that is about 350 gallons it was not a big deal. I ran carbon and did a 30 gallon water change because that is all the salt i had. Nothing died, everything seems good, just white powder on the rocks that i need to blow off. whew!

so i know why the float switch was stuck. the kalk return was dumping in the same area as the float switch, residue from the kalk had built up on the glass and float switch. it had also hardened. So it was getting caught on that. It is now soaking in vinegar.

So 2 good lessons learned. Keep the float switch high in the RO so it can not put more than 15 to 20 gallon of water in based on your system. Also keep the return of your kalk away from the float switch!

 

[Sikryd]

Glad to hear you didn't loose anything. I have heard of a lot of people running into that without a disaster because of backups like that!

 

[gparr]

Lucky this time and it looks like a little refinement will prevent future disasters. Glad you didn't suffer any losses.
Gary

 

[ficklefins]

crazy stuff and good thing you had the email notification setup.

 

[cloakerpoked]

8.9 is high, but not catastrophically so. Honestly, you wouldn't have needed to even do the water change if you didn't want to. when I OD'd my tank, I shot my pH up to 10 (which is 10 times higher than 9.0, and 100 times stronger than 8.0). Even then, all my softies, LPS, and clams made it. The SPS was another story. I ran my pH around 8.5-8.8 for a year though, and never noticed any negative effects and got great growth out of my tank. You could use two separate floats for your kalk doser if you wanted to be safer if you wanted some redundancy.

 

[rocko918]

8.9 is high, but not catastrophically so. Honestly, you wouldn't have needed to even do the water change if you didn't want to. when I OD'd my tank, I shot my pH up to 10 (which is 10 times higher than 9.0, and 100 times stronger than 8.0). Even then, all my softies, LPS, and clams made it. The SPS was another story. I ran my pH around 8.5-8.8 for a year though, and never noticed any negative effects and got great growth out of my tank. You could use two separate floats for your kalk doser if you wanted to be safer if you wanted some redundancy.

True, and it was not that high for very long, when i got home it was down to 8.2, so it really spiked fast then diluted it self.

Plan is to hook the ATO up to the AC3 and have a setting if the PH gets around 8.5 shut off the ato. Right now i have no plugs left on my DC8. need to add another one.

 

[cloakerpoked]

Yeah, your tank has to have a really strong buffering ability to hold a pH up around 9. I'm sure the precipitate helped keep the pH low too. I guess my solution for those of us who don't have a controller, although I'm a HUGE fan of redundancy, and would probably put a 2nd switch in there anyway, and link them in series. Murphy and his stupid law after all :)

 

[SteveOhh]

Quick fix is to dose a small amount of vinegar to lower the PH...................only if you don't have salt water on hand.