pH - very high

[Mike T IL]

What would cause my pH to be so high? The only thing I dose are KZ coral booster, Xtra, snow, cyano clean, vitalizer, and flatworm stop. Even the pH in my calcium reactor is high 7.9.

my Alk also continually increases. The dips in the graph is when I lower it with muratic acid.

 

[dedragon]

may be from the cyano clean or flatworm stop (and die off) but have you calibrated the pH probes in a while?

 

[Yodeling]

You sure your probes don’t need calibrating? That’s the first thing I would suspect. That would also explain your Alk rising if you’re using a bad probe to run your CaRx

 

[Sean Clark]

Have you calibrated your pH probe recently? They tend to drift high.

 

[Mike T IL]

What would cause my pH to be so high? The only thing I dose are KZ coral booster, Xtra, snow, cyano clean, vitalizer, and flatworm stop. Even the pH in my calcium reactor is high 7.9.

my Alk also continually increases. The dips in the graph is when I lower it with muratic acid.

I recalibrated all my probes last weekend. I have also used Hanna pH test and it matches the probes.

 

[Sean Clark]

How about alkalinity? Do you have an alternate method of testing that? There is a direct correlation between Alkalinity and pH.
Check out this article:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rhf/#:~:text=In my opinion, the pH,end of this pH range.
I do not see how you could have both an alkalinity of 10.48 and a pH of 8.75 at the same time.

Something is not right.

 

[Yodeling]

How about alkalinity? Do you have an alternate method of testing that? There is a direct correlation between Alkalinity and pH.
Check out this article:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rhf/#:~:text=In my opinion, the pH,end of this pH range.
I do not see how you could have both an alkalinity of 10.48 and a pH of 8.75 at the same time.

Something is not right.

Agree. For that matter I don’t believe there is any way a tank would reach 8.75 PH in normal conditions unless you are dosing Kalk or similar (in which case you would know the reason your PH is high). I would recalibrate your probes again, maybe even try a different calibration fluid.

 

[Shooter6]

Could the probe be defective? Needs replaced. At 7.9 in the calcium reactor, I dont see how you would be able to desolve the media to dose your system, seems like that would be the first verification that the ph wasn't low enough in the reactor for it to work.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

What would cause my pH to be so high? The only thing I dose are KZ coral booster, Xtra, snow, cyano clean, vitalizer, and flatworm stop. Even the pH in my calcium reactor is high 7.9.

my Alk also continually increases. The dips in the graph is when I lower it with muratic acid.

pH 8.75 is likely test error.

 

[Mike T IL]

I recalibrated all my probes last weekend. I have also used Hanna pH test and it matches the probes.

i double checked the alkalinity with a Hanna checker and it too registers what my Apex is reporting. I am thinking my issues are being self inflicted by my calcium reactor setup. I turned the calcium reactor off and PH slowly dropped and levelled out around 8.5. Alkalinity also started to slowly lower. I turned the calcium reactor off around 3 yesterday.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

If you mean a CaCO3/CO2 reactor, it is never a cause of high pH, whether it is properly set up or not. All it can do is lower pH.

The measurement is test error if a normal reef tank reads pH 8.75 without dosing high pH additives.

I would not bother bother looking for other explanations. I've been through this issue hundreds of times, one just yesterday. it , like every other one, was test error:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/should-i-take-action-ph-at-8-7.889350/

 

[Mike T IL]

If you mean a CaCO3/CO2 reactor, it is never a cause of high pH, whether it is properly set up or not. All it can do is lower pH.

The measurement is test error if a normal reef tank reads pH 8.75 without dosing high pH additives.

I would not bother bother looking for other explanations. I've been through this issue hundreds of times, one just yesterday. it , like every other one, was test error:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/should-i-take-action-ph-at-8-7.889350/

So my probes and my Hanna checkers are both incorrect since they are reporting the same numbers?

 

[Mike T IL]

I guess I can do an ICP test to find out what they see.

 

[Shooter6]

I guess I can do an ICP test to find out what they see.

What's the calcium reactor used and set up? Co2 lowers pH. So if your using co2 to run the reactor the ph should be lower in the chamber at all times compared to the system. Increasing the co2 flow drives ph down, melting the rock inside.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

So my probes and my Hanna checkers are both incorrect since they are reporting the same numbers?

Are we talking about pH? That's the only one I dispute. If the calibration fluids are incorrect, and they use the same fluids, that's what one would expect.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

try this aeration test when the pH is 8.7. It should drop a lot using inside air.

http://www.reefedition.com/ph-and-the-reef-aquarium/
The Aeration Test

Some of the possible causes of low pH listed above require an effort to diagnose. Problems 3 and 4 are quite common, and here is a way to distinguish them. Remove a cup of tank water and measure its pH. Then aerate it for an hour with an airstone using outside air. Its pH should rise if it is unusually low for the measured alkalinity (Figure 2). Then repeat the same experiment on a new cup of water using inside air. If its pH also rises, then the aquarium’s pH will rise simply with more aeration because it is only the aquarium that contains excess carbon dioxide. If the pH does not rise in the cup (or rises very little) when aerating with indoor air, then that air likely contains excess CO2, and more aeration with that same air will not solve the low pH problem (although aeration with fresher air should). Be careful implementing this test if the outside aeration test results in a large temperature change (more than 5°C or 10°F), because such changes alone impact pH measurements.

 

[Sean Clark]

I guess I can do an ICP test to find out what they see.

ICP does not test for pH or Alk.