Skimmer or kalk dosing for pH

[Kyleovski]

I have a 50G cube tank that currently doesnt run a skimmer at all, no filter socks , just a fuge on reverse schedule to display in one of the sump compartments with a kessil h80 and cheato.
Currently I struggle with keeping nutrients up have to feed pretty heavily to keep things stable at around 2.5ppm nitrate and 0.1 phos.

My issue is that my pH tends to dip pretty low Sometimes dropping as low as 7.69 when I'm in the house and during winter its not practical to open windows to keep pH up.
Its definitely a CO2 issue as I recently went on holiday for a month and the tank pH shot up to low of 8 and high of 8.15 as no one was inside.

Ideally I'd like to have a pH at 8.2-8.3 so I want to start dosing kalk, however the idea of a co2 scrubber is also an option however its more expensive investment. Im also worried that the skimmer strips even more nutrients from my water.

I also dose 20.6ml of TM All For Reef spread out over the day so I think that works out to daily alk consumption of roughly 1.2dkh so adding kalk would reduce how much afr i need to dose daily.

What do you guys suggest?

 

[KStatefan]

I would switch to something that would help your PH and also supply your alk/calcium demand. Do you have enough evaporation daily to satisfy that demand with kalkwasser?

 

[Kyleovski]

I would switch to something that would help your PH and also supply your alk/calcium demand. Do you have enough evaporation daily to satisfy that demand with kalkwasser?

Yea I think I go through about 1.7L a day in evaporation, probably more in the summer. My main aim is to bump my pH.

I was thinking of setting up a dosing pump that that runs a couple of minutes every hour on my apex with a high pH cutoff of 8.35. I was also thinking of adding a water level sensor to just above the ATO sensor to turn the doser off if the kalk dosing beats evaporation on that day.

No doubt it will need some fine tuning. to balance out everything.

 

[danimal1211]

This is also an alternative.

Second New DIY Two Part Recipe with Higher pH Boost

In a previous thread, I posted a true two part DIY recipe: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/new-diy-two-part-recipes-with-higher-ph-boost.344500/ But some folks may want to just swap the new ingredient into my 2/3 part recipe (as used by BRS, for example). Here's the original recipe link...

www.reef2reef.com