Alk Dosing and Vacation question

[Betex]

So I currently dose ~105ml sodium hydroxide to maintain my Alk/PH, alk at 7.8-8 and PH low ~8.05, high ~8.45. So my question is should the house be empty for a week there will not be much if any CO2 to help maintain the PH at those levels would me continue dosing sodium hydroxide cause the PH to skyrocket or should I switch when on vacation to something like soda ash/sodium bicarb.

Thanks!

 

[Dkeller_nc]

That's unfortunately impossible to say without knowing your current CO2 levels in your house. You're correct that the CO2 level in the house air will drop, but precisely by how much would be extraordinarily difficult to estimate since it depends on how well sealed your house is, how often the doors/windows are opened, how many occupants over what period, etc...

That said, if you're concerned about this as a possibility to the extent that it will interfere with your vacation, it is actually easy to calculate the alkalinity equivalent between dosing NaOH and sodium carbonate/bicarbonate.

 

[Reef.]

Is there no way of testing this.

Could you open extra windows in the room, or not go in the room for 24 hours, see what reading you get?

 

[srobertb]

Do you have an Apex? An Apex+trident+DOS will let you adjust remotely and will also adjust itself automatically as things change. We travel for weeks a time (well…we used to) and I can just adjust things from wherever

 

[Uncle99]

So I currently dose ~105ml sodium hydroxide to maintain my Alk/PH, alk at 7.8-8 and PH low ~8.05, high ~8.45. So my question is should the house be empty for a week there will not be much if any CO2 to help maintain the PH at those levels would me continue dosing sodium hydroxide cause the PH to skyrocket or should I switch when on vacation to something like soda ash/sodium bicarb.

Thanks!

Switching dosing before vacation sounds risky to me.
I doubt the change in CO2 as the house is empty would significantly change your current chemistry.

 

[Betex]

Do you have an Apex? An Apex+trident+DOS will let you adjust remotely and will also adjust itself automatically as things change. We travel for weeks a time (well…we used to) and I can just adjust things from wherever

Yeah I do but if I stop dosing Alk start to drop rather quickly. Issue isnt maintain the Alk its getting too high of PH

 

[Betex]

Switching dosing before vacation sounds risky to me.
I doubt the change in CO2 as the house is empty would significantly change your current chemistry.

This is exactly what I was thinking that making this big of a change before leaving would be more risky. The house is new contruction so its pretty air tight in order for me to get 8.3-8.4 ph on top of dosing 100+ml of sodium hydroxide also have to run a co2 scrubber on my skimmer.

With that said being that I use a fleece rollermat I am thinking about shutting down skimmer for the week as this hopefully should keep PH from going too high I just really dont want to make any major changes atm.

 

[Betex]

That's unfortunately impossible to say without knowing your current CO2 levels in your house. You're correct that the CO2 level in the house air will drop, but precisely by how much would be extraordinarily difficult to estimate since it depends on how well sealed your house is, how often the doors/windows are opened, how many occupants over what period, etc...

That said, if you're concerned about this as a possibility to the extent that it will interfere with your vacation, it is actually easy to calculate the alkalinity equivalent between dosing NaOH and sodium carbonate/bicarbonate.

Yeah from what I have calculated I would need to dose x2 the current amount in sodium bicarb or same amnt I current dose in soda ash. But as someone mentioned I am thinking the risk in making a change close to leaving would be just as dangerous.

 

[srobertb]

Yeah I do but if I stop dosing Alk start to drop rather quickly. Issue isnt maintain the Alk its getting too high of PH

Got ya. Depending on timing, you could run the skimmer air intake outside for a week and reset to the new PH level; even temporarily. There may still be a change when you all leave the house but it will be less.

 

[BoxKing]

In the same boat as you. I use a Hanna Probe to check my PH prior to adding the APEX, now I self adjusted my PH readings by +.15 to my seemingly low PH reading from the APEX - its consistently .14-.16 lower.

I’m aggravated with APEX programming- I see no reason why they dont allow the user to force calibration similar to that of the Temp Probe - even with Salinity. My salinity took a while, but it settled in nicely after a week or two, and is now dailed in.

 

[Betex]

I got back and everything went pretty smooth I did end up having to switch to Soda Ash as with Sodium Hydroxide I saw it getting close to 8.8 with soda ash stabilized around 8.4 with skimmer off so now I know for future what I need to do before I leave hope this helps someone else.

 

[blasterman]

You must have a lot of alk consumption. Even with windows wide open and using sodium hydroxide exclusively for alkalinity and targeting a steady 9-10 dKH I can't get numbers anywhere near as high as yours.

 

[Betex]

You must have a lot of alk consumption. Even with windows wide open and using sodium hydroxide exclusively for alkalinity and targeting a steady 9-10 dKH I can't get numbers anywhere near as high as yours.

About 100-120ml