Ozone and ph

[120gallons]

I've been slowly raising my orp and tonight it was up to 365 and I noticed my ph has dropped below 7.8 to 7.66. I throttled the ozone back a little for now.

Any suggestions on raising the ph?

 

[Phyl]

Kalk? Works wonders for us. Our low PH was caused by running our Ca reactor which was adding CO2 to the tank faster than I could otherwise get it out. By turning down the Ca reactor and kicking in the Kalk reactor, we've got a good balance now.

I guess it would help to know what your system is like and what could possibly be causing the suppressed PH.

 

[120gallons]

ph has never gone below 7.8 until today. I had thought ph and orp were inversely related, thought I read something to that effect.
I do run a calcium reactor (koralin). Alk is 2.6 meq/l, calcium is 350, nitrates <10 (water change du as of yesterday.

I've been contemplating dripping in kalk to bring up the calcium more. Think my clams and corals (3 of them) have been sucking the calcium out pretty quickly.

How do you drip it in? Dosing pump, or iv bag/kent doser?

 

[Phyl]

We're using a Kalk reactor so I can't help you there, but lots of people dose kalk without a reactor. From what I've read you could use any of the above (Dosing pump, iv bag, kent doser). There may be something else going and you'll need to adjust something else.

Hopefully one of our resident Chem Geeks will chime in soon

 

[Carlo]

You probably read the inverse thing here in RichT's thread http://www.njreefers.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=26&topic=5769.0

For every 1 unit of pH change, the ORP will change by 58/59 mV

I too would vote for dripping Kalk/Limewater. It's easy, cheap and can be controlled by a pH controller (IE neptune box).

The Kalk/Limewater will raise both Calcium & Alkalinity in a balanced fashion. When dripping I think it's best to raise your pH 0.20 per day and no more. The general wisdom is to only allow pH to change .2 in a 24hr period.

You can use either method you mentioned to dose it. I did it the cheap/easy method and drilled a hole in the top of an RC/IO salt bucket (nice screw on airtight lid) just big enough (and tight fitting) to allow me to push a piece of airline tubing down in the bucket about 2" from the bottom. I have an small 3.5 gpd Aqualifter pump connected to it (sitting on top the lid) with a nozzle/valve at the other end of the airline tubing going into the sump to limit the flow to a fast drip. The pump is connected to the Neptune controller and is turned on/off based on pH. I drip right at the effluent of one of my skimmers so the drip gets mixed really fast/well.

I don't use a pump to mix the kalk as I've never found the need to do that. Since I add fresh RO/DI water each day to the 5 gallon bucket just pouring in the new water by hand mixes it up quite nicely. I dump 1/2 a small can of kalk mix in the bucket and then just keep adding water until it's all used up. Then add more kalk mix, etc...

It's a cheap easy way to setup a kalk drip. It's probably not the most ideal but I'm happy with it although I'm thinking of upgrading to 20g bucket or so and automating the RO/DI top off and adding some type of mix device so I don't have to check it daily.

When you do add the kalk to your system you will need to watch the CA reactor and maybe turn it down a bit.

So that's an easy homemade way you can get started with a kalk reactor fast, easy and cheaply. If you like the results you get then you can refine your equipment design or pickup a "real" reactor. But this allows you to test the waters cheaply first.

Carlo

 

[120gallons]

Unforunately I have a lighthouse controller and didn't realize I had to choose either the ph or orp to be a controller and couldn't use both as a controller when I bought it. I guess I could do an extremely slow drip and watch the ph.

 

[Carlo]

With a bit of experimentation you can figure it out. It's a lot easier with a Neptune since you have both ORP and pH probes and monitors/controllers to work with. Makes it more plug and play.

Carlo