My Experience Raising pH

[Lasse]

My next project is to reduce the swing at night and I am thinking of installing an algae reactor and turning it on at night to see if this prevents some of the swings you can see from the latest results.

Normally I get swings between 8.35 and 8.10 without a scrubber (during summertime) I decided to dose my alk part of Triton core 7 only between 20:00 and 10:00 (it is Na2CO3) A day when I´m able to have doors open - it can looks like this. The bars is the dosing of 1.1 ml Na2CO3. I have a small refugium with light on from 22:00 to 10:00

One last thing, it is worth getting an indoor C02 meter as you will be shocked at how high C02 levels can climb in your home.

Exactly - here is my measurements for June 2020 compared with february 2020. Two grownup living in the apartment. During summer - terrasse doors open. Living up on a ridge 20 km from Gothenburg - Sweden

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Interesting information - we was away between 02-21 and 02-23. My son should visit our apartment and feed the fishes between 20 and 23 the 02-22 - and he did :p

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Sincerely Lasse

 

[Clownfishy]

Very interesting. Looks like these C02 monitors are great security devices as we can tell when people are in our houses!!!!

I was dosing my ALK at night like you are doing and experienced the same stable pH results. I stopped because I was not sure if this would lead to ALK swings e.g. high ALK at night and lower during the day. I dont have automatic ALK tester so I would be interested to know if people are seeing high up take of ALK during the day as corals utilise the light and low at night. Has anyone tested this and do we know if it is better to lower pH drops at night rather than ALK drops during the day.

 

[Clownfishy]

Aquarium pH reached 8.49 yesterday. The main contributors to this was -

• Windows opened all day maintaining a C02 level in the house of 425ppm
• Increased evaporation allowed a high dosing of Limewater during the night
• Replacement of C02 scrubbing media

This is allowing a reduced loss of the high pH that I am hitting during the day as during the night, I can does high levels of limewater (high air temperature and increased evaporation). Last night, I did not turn on the fan that pulls air from outside into the room as I wanted to increase the C02 level in the room to help push down the pH to normal levels. This worked as the C02 levels in the room hit 1200ppm and the pH came down to 8.37 even with the high addition of limewater during the night.
If only I could keep my windows in the house open day and night, my pH would be amazing however, living in the UK, this is not possible!

 

[Clownfishy]

Comparison between ORP and pH levels

 

[Clownfishy]

Here you can see when I dose limewater to try and offset the natural drop in pH at night. Clearly it is not enough to prevent the drop but without the limewater dosing, the pH really takes a hit at night so it is doing a very god job in supporting pH levels. It also illustrates the increase in limewater dosing starting the 20th July which pushes up and further supports the higher pH starting on the 21st July. Even so, allowing the C02 levels to rise during the night and lowering the levels of limewater on the 21st going into the 22nd, is enough to push the pH back down.
My advice for anyone who has pH problems, first thing you should buy is a C02 meter to confirm what the levels are in your home as I think you will be shocked at how high the levels are.