New calc reactor and low ph

[aerius007]

I just set up my new calc reactor yesterday. Its a dual chamber Octopus with a reef fanatic regulator. I have 10lbs co2 tank, just filled and am controlling it with an acjr. I have the acjr to kick the co2 on once the ph raises to 6.65 and to turn the co2 off when the ph hits 6.58. I calibrated the new ph probe right before I put it into the reactor. Once the co2 kicks on the bubble counter gets me about 2 bubbles per minute and takes very little time to drop the co2 to the set level.

My problem is that my tank ph today was 7.65 when I woke up. Its never above 8 this early in the morning but 7.65 is too low IMO. I assume I could lower the calc reactors output to put less effluent into the tank but having it setup for less than a day I dont have the proper output dialed in anyways. What can I do to get my ph back up.

Levels before adding reactor were
alk 8.6
calc 420
ph 8.1

 

[GPhiAce]

I am new at the Ca Reactor thing to as I am trying to dial in my reactor. I have read that an air stone under where the effluent enters or an air pump will help get rid of the excess CO2 in the water.

 

[xrayrider]

For a start set it to come on and off at a higher ph. The lower the ph, the better the reactor will produce Alk and Calcium, but you can still get the reactor to produce Alk and calcium around 6.7 - 6.8. I would do this first, slow down your output, then watch and see where your Alk plateaus at. I had to slow my bubble rate down to 1 bubble every 4 seconds, and restrict the effluent rate to get mine to stay at an Alk of 10 - 11, because it is rated for a much larger tank. I just like to buy to big, because I may want to upgrade my display tank someday. You may be surprised at where things end up. I set mine up without a controller until I could afford one. That way I could just leave things alone, test, make a small adjustment, then wait a day and test again. By the time I added the controller, I had it dialed in. The controller to me is just a safety back up to shut off the flow of CO2, incase something goes wrong, and it begins flowing too fast. It will keep the reactor media from melting down in this case. I have been thinking about adding a second controller to monitor the tank ph, and shut things down if it gets too low.

 

[aerius007]

Ok, I'll raise the ph in the reactor a bit, lower the effluent some, and Im going to run the effluent into the skimmer chamber so that it either runs through the skimmer to let the co2 escape or down the 4" long drain from that chamber to the sump. I'll back the bubbles off a bit too but considering its on a controller would the bubble count really matter? I get the less its turned on and off the better.

 

[revo]

I have a 1 inch pvc pipe in my sump with an airstone in it; i then drip the effluent into the pipe. This has increased my ph by .10. i used to also temper my makeup water with kalk which also improved my ph.

 

[Werdlone]

if you tend to have lower pH to start with, I would look into dripping kalk to counter the ca reactor. Or, just raise the internal pH of the reactor to 6.7-8 and slow your drip rate. It took me a week or so to get mine fine tuned for stable parameters.

 

[aerius007]

I turned off the co2 for now, tank ph was down to 7.5 :(