klwheat
Sat, 8th Oct 2016, 02:59 PM
Ok, a little background. My pH has always run a bit low - 7.7-7.95 (rarely hitting 8) despite all other parameters in check. I found this a bit frustrating, but didn't want to try to artificially increase it and mess up something else. Well, I figured if these corals should just naturally prefer a pH closer to their norm, so I've been doing a lot of reading.
This seems to be an issue in newer houses that are more tightly sealed up. We had the same problem with our last house and tank. As I continued reading, I realized our house was particularly at risk for this due to occupancy - 2 adults and 2 good-sized kiddos plus 4 big dogs. That's a LOT of CO2. Well, since we such nice, cool weather the other week, I thought I'd try an experiment. Left several windows open as much of the day as I could, and see what happens. Well, I didn't screenshot from my apex, but my pH range moved up to 8-8.2 during the day with only that change. When it warmed up and I was out of the house, windows closed and pH went right back down (usually up or down within a matter of hours).
Ok, well maybe there's something to it!
Now, part 2. I can't leave the windows open all that often (don't care for the heat that much...lol) so what else to do. One of the biggest ways more air gets into the solution of our tanks is our skimmers. If you have high CO2 in the air in the house, it'll naturally be entering the water in higher than "normal" levels. This decreases the pH as CO2 increases. So, I hooked a container of CO2 absorbent (similar to that used in anesthesia or scuba rebreather equipment) to the air intake for my skimmer.
The result, my pH has consistently been 8-8.2 all week since I hooked it up.
Now, the true test...lets see if my corals care over time.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This seems to be an issue in newer houses that are more tightly sealed up. We had the same problem with our last house and tank. As I continued reading, I realized our house was particularly at risk for this due to occupancy - 2 adults and 2 good-sized kiddos plus 4 big dogs. That's a LOT of CO2. Well, since we such nice, cool weather the other week, I thought I'd try an experiment. Left several windows open as much of the day as I could, and see what happens. Well, I didn't screenshot from my apex, but my pH range moved up to 8-8.2 during the day with only that change. When it warmed up and I was out of the house, windows closed and pH went right back down (usually up or down within a matter of hours).
Ok, well maybe there's something to it!
Now, part 2. I can't leave the windows open all that often (don't care for the heat that much...lol) so what else to do. One of the biggest ways more air gets into the solution of our tanks is our skimmers. If you have high CO2 in the air in the house, it'll naturally be entering the water in higher than "normal" levels. This decreases the pH as CO2 increases. So, I hooked a container of CO2 absorbent (similar to that used in anesthesia or scuba rebreather equipment) to the air intake for my skimmer.
The result, my pH has consistently been 8-8.2 all week since I hooked it up.
Now, the true test...lets see if my corals care over time.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk