Sulphur Denitrator question....

[stcreef]

I've run into an interesting dilema. On my 125g DT I run a sulphur denitrator made out of an Octopus dual chamber Cal reactor. First chamber has a few cups of sulphur beads and then filled with Seachem Matrix. The second chamber is filled with ARM.

If anyone that runs a similar setup could get a pH reading for me out of thier first chamber it would be much appreciated.

Here's what is happening. Its been up and running for about 3 months and has been doing its job very well. So last week I noticed two things happening in my water. One, the pH has been slowly declining since the house is all buttoned up, but I bring in fresh outside air for the skimmer. Secondly my alk and cal readings started climbing, I just thought I may have overdosed on 2 part, so I turned off the dosing pumps. Well they have been off for about 4 days and I am still gaining about 20ppm cal a day.

So today it dawned on me that maybe I have an issue with the denitrator, because thats the only other possible source of calcium. Turns out the 1st chamber is at about pH 6.8. So I have quite the calcium reactor going on here without an outside source of co2.

So I have taken it offline to make sure I can get the cal and alk from rising. Then if this is the case, I need to find what is causing all of the co2. Then I need to be able to recreate it, cause this would be awesome for cal reactor users to be able to do this without a bottle.

So what do others see as a pH in their denitrators?

 

[Phyl]

This is what should be happening in the denitrator (lowering of PH). You could put dolomite in there instead (or with) the ARM instead. We ran the dolomite instead of the ARM in there.

 

[stcreef]

I understand the process, but I wasnt aware that the pH would go that low. I thought the best I would see is the low 7's, but not into the 6's. I havent seen any reference anywhere. So I was curious as to what pH others are seeing.

 

[Phyl]

As a matter of fact, they say to use dolomite instead of ARM because ARM has a higher "melting" point than the dolomite and more likely to go to mush. PH in the mid-high sixes is what we expected. Mine isn't running right now, so I couldn't tell you what it is.