Low PH, CA, and ALK. Help please!

[Bill S]

Well, yes. Your pH ranges are PROBABLY ok. However, dosing kalk WILL help in the long run. If you are running a Ca reactor, you need to be running a kalk reactor. Just MO.

[JimD]

There should be very little Ph swing if you learn how to top off with kalk at night when the Ph is at its lowest. That and reverse fuge lighting are the best ways to stabalize Ph.

[ErikH]

Ok, my reactor's effluent smells like rotten eggs. I am going to assume that it is not working correctly and take it offline. Any ideas?

[ErikH]

Ok, so what I am doing to remedy the problem is this.
I flushed my CA reactor with 10 gallons of water. The first bucket stunk, the second did not. I am now dripping into a bucket at my normal drip rate of 1 drop per second.
The ph in the tank has risen a whole point since doing this. I am going to try and continue this overnight and see if my PH stabilizes. I have been using the three part supplements for CA ALK and Mg. Each are coming back into balance accordingly.

[mikedelgado]

my tank runs at about the same parameters as fishn's. I do use a kalk reactor for my top off. despite the lower ph #s everything seems to be doing fine. I was told the co2 from the calcium reactor is going to drop your ph a little. I dont think it is going to hurt anything. reverse lighting the fuge and kalk reactor are supposed to help keep ph up. tje rotten egg smell is suspicious though.

[JimD]

Sounds like the Ca media is channeling causing no-flow areas within the chamber. No-flow = stagnent water = PEEYOO!

[ErikH]

PH is now 8.3 but CA is still low at 370, in the first post I was wrong. It was originally 270. The dKH is now at 12from 8. My halides run for 12 hours and my fuge light (70w Viper) runs the opposite. I am dosing kalk again through my ato and have slowed my drip rate from the CA reactor to 1 drop per 3 seconds as per Ace's recommendation. The stagnant water has been flushed out, no big deal. I will keep updating to keep a little record for myself and for future amusement. The effluent from the CA reactor smelled like rotten eggs, it was pretty gross...

[fishn]

I have also added my Kalk reactor back to my system, but have not seen a big diffrence in the PH. Although it dose not get to dangersly low now.