Sky rocketed PH

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

@Miami Reef I dripped 1250 mil of sodium hydroxide. Fortunately I was dead smack in the middle of my full spectrum photo period. I’ve been struggling keeping up with consumption. Consumption has been taking off near exponentially. I’m going to recalibrate all my probes tonight. But I just put a brand new probe on the system last week and calibrated all 3. (CARX/KALK). No chance it was a testing issue.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

My DOS is currently set to 1k mill a day with control at 50% for both S Hydroxide and S bicarb. Hydroxide shuts off over ph of 8.50. And bicarb is off below 8.51. 85% of my daily dos has been bicarb lately. Sand is not hard there is no precip.

 

[rishma]

Assume all is happy and normal?

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

Coral and fish appear to be happy. Same PE as prenuclear horizon. Water chemistry is a different story. It’s kind of all over the place. I let the system just start dosing when things fell back inline. Kalk started back up last night. At 2am it shut down as DKH jumped over 9.8 to 10.2. So since 2am all ALK dosing and my CARX have been off. I normally go through about 800-1000 mill a day and my CARX is spinning its undersized wheels at 6.45 ph at 160mil a minute. I dosed a little less then usual for calcium at 360 mil and I am down 10 PPm vs 12 hours ago. Ph never got above 8.27. Water is clear. Fish are eating. Polyps are flowing.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

Oh… nutrients. Po4 is down to .10 (tested twice) No3 is at 1.5. Tested 3 times. I just put the No3 on dosing st 100 mil a day dropped over 24 hours. I am also dosing 100 mil of ammonia. Can’t bottom out. Can’t.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

DKh is 10.0 and hasn’t really moved since 2 am. And my ph is at 8.24.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

I am still bubbling away, btw.

 

[rishma]

I think you are nearly in the clear on the vinegar dosing. I’d say you can cut the extra aeration this time tomorrow. But I aerate the heck out my tank all the time .

If you are aerating heavily with indoor air, it can cause your pH to be a little lower than normal due to higher CO2. Not sure if you are seeing lower than normal pH. Kinda hard to tell since you also cut out NaOH. Just thought I’d mention it.

Not surprised on the nutrient drop. Without more carbon source it will come back up. Also, bottoming out nitrate is not so scary. Phosphate on the other hand…

One last thought, when I upset the tank parameters, alkalinity consumption is often lower for a few days. I assume this is because my corals are ticked off and not building skeletons.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

So it is just bottomed out phosphate I thought it was both oh well, I’m guessing I’ve got it to about 6 by now :) lol. Do you aerate with outside air? If so, do you pull it through a carbon filter? My landscaper’s equipment was made in the 70’s I think because he must be running leaded fuel.

For anyone reading along who may be trying to take away my Darwin Award, I realized that I put in more, much more, vinegar than I thought. I put in at least 2500 mil. I found an empty 1L bottle that fell and rolled by my frag tank. So that is nearly 29 times more than you should put per the chart. However, that would not have moved my needle. Granted, I remember cracking a bottle and dumping half in and waiting 10 minutes. That just caused the PH to flatline. From there I was serving vinegar like a drunk bartender.

 

[Miami Reef]

Leaving the pH higher (8.2 to 8.3) will encourage more alkalinity consumption, both through abiotic and biotic precipitation. That may be a benefit if you’re trying to reduce it.

Significant precipitation will add more surface area for phosphate to adsorb to. The decreased PO₄ makes chemical sense.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

Leaving the pH higher (8.2 to 8.3) will encourage more alkalinity consumption, both through abiotic and biotic precipitation. That may be a benefit if you’re trying to reduce it.

Significant precipitation will add more surface area for phosphate to adsorb to. The decreased PO₄ makes chemical sense.

By reduce it, do you mean meeting to reduce alk consumption? I think my consumption issues will settle down when I get my new carx online. I did a thing and ordered Geo’s commercial reactor. I shouldn’t need to buffer much of at all with that. It will also suppress my ph as it runs on a 3/8th line feed pump capable of 35 DKh at 200 or 250 mil a minute.

On the po4, I was running .08ish before. I hit .23 last night and am down to .10. I’m not finding any precip in my tank at all.

 

[rishma]

So it is just bottomed out phosphate I thought it was both oh well, I’m guessing I’ve got it to about 6 by now :) lol. Do you aerate with outside air? If so, do you pull it through a carbon filter? My landscaper’s equipment was made in the 70’s I think because he must be running leaded fuel.

For anyone reading along who may be trying to take away my Darwin Award, I realized that I put in more, much more, vinegar than I thought. I put in at least 2500 mil. I found an empty 1L bottle that fell and rolled by my frag tank. So that is nearly 29 times more than you should put per the chart. However, that would not have moved my needle. Granted, I remember cracking a bottle and dumping half in and waiting 10 minutes. That just caused the PH to flatline. From there I was serving vinegar like a drunk bartender.

I like to keep nitrate from bottoming out, but i don’t panic of it does. I panic a little with phosphate.

I aerate with outdoor air. I have told myself I’d add an intake filter but I never did. The only time I got worried was local fires causing bad air quality so I shut it down. I’ve not had any problems, but I agree an intake filter would be smart insurance.

Your fish might be pickled with all that vinegar.

 

[UncommonSense]

I aerate with outdoor air. I have told myself I’d add an intake filter but I never did. The only time I got worried was local fires causing bad air quality so I shut it down. I’ve not had any problems, but I agree an intake filter would be smart insurance.

Use a mechanical filter if nothing else!

You would be amazed at how many critters will find their way into any tubing left open outside… — don’t ask me how I know!

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

I don’t have time to manually test this morning, but my MT red .015 on po4 this am. I manually tested at .10 last night. I may only have had one cup of coffee so perhaps I’m not thinking correctly but I may not have realize that my Hanna’s po4 value appears to not be the same as my MT? Meaning .xxx vs .xx and the MT leads with a lot of .0

 

[rishma]

I don’t have time to manually test this morning, but my MT red .015 on po4 this am. I manually tested at .10 last night. I may only have had one cup of coffee so perhaps I’m not thinking correctly but I may not have realize that my Hanna’s po4 value appears to not be the same as my MT? Meaning .xxx vs .xx and the MT leads with a lot of .0

When you can, double check with Hanna and if it’s really that low I’d dose some phosphate.

What’s MT? I’m guessing an automated tester.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

Yeah, mastertronic. I plan to do both on Hanna when I get home.

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

6.7/.11

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

Consumption slowly starting to creep up. The system dosed 290 mil today out of a potential 1k. CARX stayed online all day but last night kalk shut down at 2 am. It is online and dripping now. DKH dropped from 10.1 to 9.2 from 9 to 10:30 tonight. That’s the first real movement. I have my first coral showing issue. I forget what you call this, but it’s an LPS, I think. It has about a 1” squarish area with exposed Skelton. I hope this is isolated and not the start of something. Or is good on all the SPS. A couple of my tenuous aren’t as fluffy as they normally are. But hell, I hit 9.3…

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

Another

 

[WhatCouldGoWrong71]

Just for those keeping up - Sadly, I’m starting to see signs of stress now in 3 pieces. So so sadly, my favorite piece that has colored up, phenomenon PE and has just started to really take off (my blue and green tenuous).