Low pH with kalkwasser

[BurtG]

Could it be a furnace or water heater going bad causing it?

 

[Panky]

Weird. I’m slowly seeing the same issue as you all are. I’m even running a CO2 scrubber.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Did you change brand of kalk recently,
Or perhaps reactor isn’t air tight or kalk powder gets exposed to oxygen and loses
potency. Even small oxygen exposure reduces kalkwasser PH

Not oxygen, but CO2 does deplete it by causing formation of calcium carbonate.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Could it be a furnace or water heater going bad causing it?

Would be an extremely dangerous situation, if it was leaking that much CO2 (and likely some CO) into the home air.

 

[Key Largo]

I've posed this issue as well, with my 340 gallon system. I still think there's something with larger tanks, age, and PH. I have the exact same issue as you with some differences. 1. I ran Vodka for a year. 2. My ph from when I first setup the tank stayed in the 8.1 at night up to 8.4 during the day for the first 3-4 years. Then something happened. I replaced my PH probe thinking something was wrong with the probe. And PH was still low at 7.6 at night and up to 7.8. It was almost overnight that my ph stopped going above 8.0.

I don't know the biological processes enough to understand if there's something continuously producing CO2 in my water. Are there pockets of CO2 creation? Bacteria strains that appear after 3-4 years of operation? I've barely gotten my PH up over 8 in the last 3 months. To do so, I had to do a lot:

1. Stop all vodka dosing completely!
2. Ran my skimmer hose to my air exchanger intake vent to pull in some outside air
3. increased baked baking soda dosing (since stopping vodka dosing, coral uptake of alk has significantly increased going from dosing 40 ml per day of baked baking soda to 240 ml per day of baked baking soda).

I have 3 near adults in 3200 square foot house. I don't know how much CO2 a human generates, but everyone I talk to locally, doesn't believe that 2-3 adults can produce that much CO2 in this much space to keep PH that low. I don't even have a dog or cat or any other pets. My wife has a ton of house plants, that should actually remove some of the CO2.

Some of my neighbors have had radon detected in their basements the largest amounts coming from where the sump pump (low point in the basement) is placed. My sump and aquarium are less than 10 feet from my sump holes.

I don't know if something like Radon, or something in my furnace room, EM Fields from my electrical panel, or something biological inside the tank. Just seems odd, that just 3 years ago I feared my ph getting too high, then after a year of vodka dosing and adding denitrification processes, now I can't get my PH back over 8.0. Something semi permanent happened, and I have no idea what it is.

I know people think I'm crazy for thinking this. But, there's something strange going on in the neighborhood!

Very similar to my situation, except we do have a dog, lol. I am considering stopping carbon dosing, but then its a whole other set of issues. Nobody has chimed in on if there is any difference dosing kalk on a continuous drip rather than, lets say, 2 large additions during the day/night. Maybe with a slow drip the level of CO2 negates the pH rise? still doesnt answer the question of the pretty sudden change in pH values. Anybody see any benefit to water changes (besides the obvious dilution of anything in the water) as a reset of parameters. I am hesitant because I dont want to shock the inhabitants. Animals are stable right now.

 

[Key Largo]

Would be an extremely dangerous situation, if it was leaking that much CO2 (and likely some CO) into the home air.

the CO2 monitor would alert me to that. its in the furnace room

 

[Dburr1014]

This is what happens when it's connected to an ATO.
My sump is a large tub so I'm not concerned about the jumps. The last big jump is after my AWC finishes after 1.5 hours of the ATO being off.
The PH probe is in the sump also.