PH on the drop - Can't seem to isolate cause, any suggestions?

Randy Holmes-Farley

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The test tells me the pH measurement is likely ok and the air is generally ok but the tank water is not aerated completely. More aeration will help.
 
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The test tells me the pH measurement is likely ok and the air is generally ok but the tank water is not aerated completely. More aeration will help.
Any suggestions on how to achieve that? Or what could change that would reduce the aeration causing my ph to drop as it had been running in a great range. The skimmer doesn’t not have any obstructions and appears to be functioning. You can see the amount of surface aggregation. I haven’t added or removed any equipment.
 

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Any suggestions on how to achieve that? Or what could change that would reduce the aeration causing my ph to drop as it had been running in a great range. The skimmer doesn’t not have any obstructions and appears to be functioning. You can see the amount of surface aggregation. I haven’t added or removed any equipment.

Complete aeration of tank water is harder than people think.

Do you have a sump? is it closed?
 
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Undetectable nitrate is a risk factor for dinos.
Oof is it though? haha, I’d rather discuss ways to improve aeration.

But… I’ve never had issues running my nitrates between 0-5ish. Nor did anyone I knew back when. I have a few canary acros if they look pale I feed more. Something I got used to back when I carbon dosed on older systems. I doubt I ever will hit true 0. I still have a fugue that is growing, hair algea in the display (more than I’d like) the glass needs cleaning every other day, the corals are dark in colour. When I test 0, I open up my roller bypass a little, cull back my cheato by half, and start feeding again the daily nori I had temporarily cut back on in order to motivate my tangs to go after the algae on my rocks.

I am very leary to dose nitrates. when I first got back I was happily hitting 0, however, everything I was reading and new folks I was talking to suggested elevated nitrates. I mixed the recommend amount and brand of stump remover dosed, a small amount and shortly after saw one of the few corals I’ve lost this go around RTN; needless to say I’ve been gun shy and skeptical since.

Of all the changes in the hobby since I left and returned Dino theory is the one I can’t seem to wrap my head around.

My old tanks ran bare bottom, starting with dry rock as well.
Who knows maybe I have Dinos already I have had a persistent cyano issue, maybe it’s Dinos or both, lately it’s been tapering off and at no point was causing any issues outside of poor aesthetics. (You can see some in the tank video posted on the other page). I chalked this up to starting this tank off a tear down that had old and well used rock, assuming I’d be leaching out decade+ of n&p saturation.

Where do things like, iron, live rock, and bacteria fit into the picture? What changed? Green boring algae used to go bump in the night to us stick nerds so we drove nitrates down.
 
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My no3 need ICP to be detected (the new Hannah can probably detect them) and I have no dino issues. I could write a book on why this like is, but i will avoid it... not everybody has dino issues with NSW type of residual nitrate levels.

In any case. I run multiple skimmers (for other reasons, but this too), huge surface flow and let my overflows tumble into the sump in larger pipes (noise is not an issue) all which help with aeration.

Still, the best thing to do is to exchange air, even the winter. People think that they somehow have to keep the windows open all of the time or otherwise let their homes cool off with long periods of outside air. It is just exchanging air. We have a 10k+ CFM whole house fan and just a minute every few days keep the co2 down to nearly exterior levels. Think of it like airing out your car after your nasty buddy cuts a fart... you just need to get that air out and fresh in and a few seconds can do this... not even long enough to cool off the rest of the things in the car and the air quickly heats back up and everybody is happy again. Even in the winter, my wife and kids can tell when we air out the house and there is benefits beyond the reef. If you never get behind on this, it is easy to keep up. If the high is over 20, then we do it.

If you really want to care about this, then a pH pen is cheap and reliable... better than a hobby test kit.
 

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Did you change anything electrical near your pH Probe? If my heater shifts in the sump, and is on, it will mess with my Pinpoint Probe. The Cable is Shielded, but strong EMF Can defeat the Shielding. Try relocating the cable, cables crossing is okay, parallel cables is not okay.
 
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My no3 need ICP to be detected (the new Hannah can probably detect them) and I have no dino issues. I could write a book on why this like is, but i will avoid it... not everybody has dino issues with NSW type of residual nitrate levels.

In any case. I run multiple skimmers (for other reasons, but this too), huge surface flow and let my overflows tumble into the sump in larger pipes (noise is not an issue) all which help with aeration.

Still, the best thing to do is to exchange air, even the winter. People think that they somehow have to keep the windows open all of the time or otherwise let their homes cool off with long periods of outside air. It is just exchanging air. We have a 10k+ CFM whole house fan and just a minute every few days keep the co2 down to nearly exterior levels. Think of it like airing out your car after your nasty buddy cuts a fart... you just need to get that air out and fresh in and a few seconds can do this... not even long enough to cool off the rest of the things in the car and the air quickly heats back up and everybody is happy again. Even in the winter, my wife and kids can tell when we air out the house and there is benefits beyond the reef. If you never get behind on this, it is easy to keep up. If the high is over 20, then we do it.

If you really want to care about this, then a pH pen is cheap and reliable... better than a hobby test kit.

I thought of going multiple skimmers one of the things I did that helped to boost my PH was replacing my smaller SRO with a larger (but older) skimmer, I could run both. However, I keep circling back to is I was getting get winter PH with what I was doing before, I don't want to keep throwing more things at the tank. Ideally, I want to figure out what changed and why.

So far it looks like
1) My probe calibration was off
2) The Kalk stirrer is no longer giving full saturation. Avast is recommending I add zipties to the stirrer shaft for additional mixing. Guess we'll see how that works.
3) The skimmer for whatever reason isn't aerating like it was. I've been holding out waiting for the Jump 800 but I may pick up something else instead.

As far as air exchange I live in an Old Ranch house construction in the 50s; I could do with a little less air exchange. Opening the windows is just something we do regardless of how it impacts the tank as the weather is really nice this time of year. Come June when it heats up I start running the evaporative cooler which forces a massive amount of air right past the tank. If this summer the tank behaves like last summer I'll most likely end up trying to figure out how to reduce my PH July-Sept.

I do need some sort of way to measure c02 not sure what tool everyone is using?

Did you change anything electrical near your pH Probe? If my heater shifts in the sump, and is on, it will mess with my Pinpoint Probe. The Cable is Shielded, but strong EMF Can defeat the Shielding. Try relocating the cable, cables crossing is okay, parallel cables is not okay.

Hmmm, that's a good question. I can't say that I did I haven't added or removed any equipment however my wires are in desperate need of organization. It is one aspect of the tank I have been neglecting.
 
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Still struggling, no luck; even pulling consistent 12.3 via the kalk reactor.
1652228298171.png


1652227923293.png


Today the tank is struggling to even break into the 8s.
1652227976826.png


Skimmer is working great, cleaned the roller mat out, all my gyres are running agitating things.

@Randy Holmes-Farley Is there anything out there that could limit your PH? Grasping at straws here, maybe something from my well? (I am using Ro/DI but was long overdue for a filter change)

Before I apply more band-aids I'd really like to figure out what would cause the drop.
 
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Well decided to try to cram my spare skimmer in the sump, so I am now running two skimmers. Guess I'll give it the week or so and see how it affects my ph. If it goes up then, I'll know that my main skimmer is no longer meeting the needs of the tank anymore and it's time to upgrade.
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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Where do things like, iron, live rock, and bacteria fit into the picture? What changed? Green boring algae used to go bump in the night to us stick nerds so we drove nitrates down.

I'm sure many factors are involved. Many people smoke heavily and do not get cancer. In both settings, one needs to to look to many cases to see the effect. I'm pretty convinced that undetectable nutrients is a part of the puzzle, but I agree that it not a guarantee of a problem.
 
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I'm sure many factors are involved. Many people smoke heavily and do not get cancer. In both settings, one needs to to look to many cases to see the effect. I'm pretty convinced that undetectable nutrients is a part of the puzzle, but I agree that it not a guarantee of a problem.
Low nutrients are a part of the ph issue?! How so? I have gha everywhere and a thriving fugue, I doubt my numbers are truly 0/0 even if they were reading it at that moment. When I test I find a variance
 

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This is probably not the issue, but do you have something more reliable than a hobby grade probe to check this? Even a cheap pH pen? pH probe is one of the most unreliable pieces of equipment in the hobby. ...just wondering before you chase too much else.
 
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This is probably not the issue, but do you have something more reliable than a hobby grade probe to check this? Even a cheap pH pen? pH probe is one of the most unreliable pieces of equipment in the hobby. ...just wondering before you chase too much else.
I used the Hanna pen as well, and I have 3 different probes I've tried (2 pinpoints & 1 Neptune). The Neptune probe I'm using now is a few weeks old, and it's what I also used when I did the aeration cup of water test which showed it rising. Happy to pick something else up if you have any recommendations?

Here is today's trend so far with the extra skimmer. Yesterday, at this time I was at 7.91 today at 7.90 so no real difference so far. The spikes are from when the DOS adds Kalk. Earlier in the week I reduced the total kalk i'm adding to 2200ml from 2800ml. Once I started fully saturating the Kalk stirrer by having it pull from a pre-saturated bin my alk movement went up and I'd like to avoid any additional instabilities at this time. The underside of one of the acro's that I have grown from a 1/2" frag to a 3-4" mini colony started to RTN, it seems to have stopped, this will be the first established piece I've lost in this system and I'd like to avoid that happening if possible. I've also seen a resurgence in AEFW which I had mostly staved off for a few months now. This leads me to believe my acro's, in general, are not 100% which is allowing the AEFW to gain footing.

1652291269321.png
 
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Good. I figured that you were covered, I have seen too many chase pH and spend a lot of money only to find out later that their probe was bad.

If your house is aired out, then I really don't have anything else to add. Sorry and good luck.

AEFW are somewhat cycle-ish. ...probably just a time for an upcycle in the eggs and hatchlings from a low a few months ago. AEFW can totally gain hold on totally healthy acropora.
 

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Low nutrients are a part of the ph issue?! How so? I have gha everywhere and a thriving fugue, I doubt my numbers are truly 0/0 even if they were reading it at that moment. When I test I find a variance

No, part of the dino puzzle that we were discussing above.
 
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Good. I figured that you were covered, I have seen too many chase pH and spend a lot of money only to find out later that their probe was bad.

If your house is aired out, then I really don't have anything else to add. Sorry and good luck.

AEFW are somewhat cycle-ish. ...probably just a time for an upcycle in the eggs and hatchlings from a low a few months ago. AEFW can totally gain hold on totally healthy acropora.
Oof well shot, I guess soon enough I’ll have the evaporative coolers running and we’ll see if forced outside air across the tank does the trick.

As far as aefw while they can and regularly do get a hold of healthy acros. My aefw are not left unchecked so I typically won’t see them flock to a coral unless that coral is in some sort of distress. normally it will be 1 or 2 where as this week there were a few dozen and they had started to move onto pieces that have not previously been targets.

Once I plumb in the frag tank I may cave remove all the acros and start a dip cycle. Doing in a DT is too disruptive. Not looking forward to it, but the longer I wait the more likely I’ll end up needing to dip whole rocks which I’d like to avoid.
 
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