I'm wondering if other people see huge swings in alkalinity uptake like I have over the past few days. I switched from a smallish calcium reactor, a Korallin C1502 to a larger MRC CR6, which holds probably 6 times the amount of media. I also switched from Reborn melting at around 6.7 pH to Arm Coarse at 6.3 pH. I have been keeping an extremely careful eye on alkalinity over the past few days, to the point where I'm fairly comfortable about the level of alkalinity coming out of the effluent, but it's hard to keep the needle stable. I am wondering if other people have had similar experiences in Alkalinity uptake.
I had 30 ml\M coming out at around 22 dkH. I was around 8.3 dkH in the tank, and I've had to up the strength of the effluent to almost 28 dkH to keep it at 7.9dkH. Usually with the alkalinity I'm pumping in over night I'll see a .4 dkH swing max, but even as I've increased the effluent strength I'm still seeing it consume a tremendous amount during the day. This morning I was at 8.3, and I've been pumping 28 dkH all day and it was down to 7.9 this evening. I've had the windows open, pH is over 8.4, so I know everything is growing like mad, but has anyone else seen this kind of huge variation in uptake? I'm also dosing kalkwasser hourly at a set rate.
Short of an Alkatronic or similar, I'm not sure the swings are that big a deal, but it makes me think that it's nearly an impossible task to peg the alkalinity in the tank if your conditions are changing, particularly pH and CO2. I have a 250 gallon tank, 3 years into a mostly SPS environment; so it's not that small of a volume either. It seems like the closer you watch, the more fluctuations you're going to see.
I had 30 ml\M coming out at around 22 dkH. I was around 8.3 dkH in the tank, and I've had to up the strength of the effluent to almost 28 dkH to keep it at 7.9dkH. Usually with the alkalinity I'm pumping in over night I'll see a .4 dkH swing max, but even as I've increased the effluent strength I'm still seeing it consume a tremendous amount during the day. This morning I was at 8.3, and I've been pumping 28 dkH all day and it was down to 7.9 this evening. I've had the windows open, pH is over 8.4, so I know everything is growing like mad, but has anyone else seen this kind of huge variation in uptake? I'm also dosing kalkwasser hourly at a set rate.
Short of an Alkatronic or similar, I'm not sure the swings are that big a deal, but it makes me think that it's nearly an impossible task to peg the alkalinity in the tank if your conditions are changing, particularly pH and CO2. I have a 250 gallon tank, 3 years into a mostly SPS environment; so it's not that small of a volume either. It seems like the closer you watch, the more fluctuations you're going to see.
