NanJ
Active Member
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2019
- Messages
- 132
- Reaction score
- 111
- Location
- Upstate SC
- What state or country do you live in
- South Carolina
We had a very mysterious pH drop in 3 tanks Friday night that I though interesting enough to post and see if anyone has ideas to explain what happened.
Our set up: 300 gallon DT on main floor, 100 gallon sump in walk-out/finished basement 'fish room' along with 55 gallon fish QT and 20 gallon coral QT. The systems have been running for one year. There are just the two of us living in the house along with two Golden Retrievers. Our house is one year old, fairly large and reasonably tight. We are in South Carolina so temperatures are pretty mild.
What happened: Overnight Friday night the pH dropped 0.3-0.4 on all three tanks. Since the tanks are separate, we had to assume it was environmental, i.e. a CO2 issue. When we got up on Saturday and saw the issues we turned on the furnace fan to run continuously, opened a couple of windows and put a big fan in the fish room to circulate air. Over the day, the pH climbed back close to normal on all three tanks. These are images from our Apex system for each tank.
Display Tank / Coral QT / Fish QT
We are completely flummoxed as to what could have caused this We have a heat pump/propane dual fuel heating system and keep the basement thermostat at 65. The propane furnace doesn't kick in unless the outdoor temperature is less than 40. When the pH drop happened, the outdoor temp only got to 41. We have a propane tankless water heater (wall-mounted in the fish room) which only burns propane when in use - and it wasn't in use overnight. No fireplace in the house. The oven was on Friday from about 6-7 pm at 550 degrees to cook pizza but it is an electric oven - and I cook pizza at this temp almost every week.
Any ideas to explain this are much appreciated. I assume if it happens again, we will have to think about having some sort of professional evaluation of our home's ventilation.
Our set up: 300 gallon DT on main floor, 100 gallon sump in walk-out/finished basement 'fish room' along with 55 gallon fish QT and 20 gallon coral QT. The systems have been running for one year. There are just the two of us living in the house along with two Golden Retrievers. Our house is one year old, fairly large and reasonably tight. We are in South Carolina so temperatures are pretty mild.
What happened: Overnight Friday night the pH dropped 0.3-0.4 on all three tanks. Since the tanks are separate, we had to assume it was environmental, i.e. a CO2 issue. When we got up on Saturday and saw the issues we turned on the furnace fan to run continuously, opened a couple of windows and put a big fan in the fish room to circulate air. Over the day, the pH climbed back close to normal on all three tanks. These are images from our Apex system for each tank.
Display Tank / Coral QT / Fish QT
We are completely flummoxed as to what could have caused this We have a heat pump/propane dual fuel heating system and keep the basement thermostat at 65. The propane furnace doesn't kick in unless the outdoor temperature is less than 40. When the pH drop happened, the outdoor temp only got to 41. We have a propane tankless water heater (wall-mounted in the fish room) which only burns propane when in use - and it wasn't in use overnight. No fireplace in the house. The oven was on Friday from about 6-7 pm at 550 degrees to cook pizza but it is an electric oven - and I cook pizza at this temp almost every week.
Any ideas to explain this are much appreciated. I assume if it happens again, we will have to think about having some sort of professional evaluation of our home's ventilation.
Last edited:
