I have been able to achieve a pretty stable pH for a week now. My apex says that my average is 8.24 over the previous 7 day period. This is a major break through for me at my house. With two adults, two children and two 100+ pound dogs, my pH was always at a pathetic level. 7.9 in the morning to maybe 8.1 in the day. No wander I wasn't getting any serious growth. If I was able to open the windows, I could get to 8.3, but it would go straight back down over night. No stability. He's what I did to over come it.
As in my previous post, I have my skimmer hooked up to a brs scrubber system. Unfortunately this wasn't enough to significantly improve my stability. What really made a difference was the constant input of concentrated limewater via my kalk stirrer.
In the past I was only topping off at night with about 3 liters of lime water per day. Since I recently installed four fans in my hood, my evaporation rate more than doubled therefore requiring 6 liters per day. So I changed my replenishment schedule to dose 6 litters over the whole day. The trick that has made all the difference is to make sure I put fresh kalk into the stirrer (two heaping tablespoons) every two days. This combined with making sure the scrubber was always full of unspent media has made a huge difference. One other aspect is to get the pH where you want it and try to maintain that level with the combined methods.
It's not perfect, but it's a great start to achieving a goal that has been quite elusive to me. The windows have been closed for two days now, and the lowest the pH has gotten is 8.22.
My corals are really taking off now. I've seen more growth in the last week than I've seen in a month. The constant input of kalk has keep my calcium level at 425 and my alk around 7dkh. I was always afraid of overdosing, but the more kalk I put in, the bigger the corals grow.
I hope this helps others with there pH stability problems.
Thank you to all the others who have chimed in on this subject too.
