Calcium Reactor PH

[LittleMaui]

Decided to top-off the media in my calcium reactor today. When I refilled everything and fired it up, I noticed the PH in the reactor was at 9.39. This seems odd since I'm running my tank water through it at 8.0. I recalibrated the probe and checked it with another tester - with the same result. Seems odd. Is this normal? Does the media in the reactor have a high PH?

 

[ca1ore]

Did u rinse the new media well? If not, any dust can act like kalkwasser and present an initially high pH. No biggie, it will pass.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

There have been weird batches of media around that initially raise pH. I have no idea what's been done to it to have that happen.

 

[LittleMaui]

I let the reactor run for several hours, but only got the PH down to 7.55. When I added more media, I did not rinse the old. So maybe it had settled and I wasn't getting good circulation. This morning I took all the media out and rinsed in RODI. I'll try again

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

It will drop and begin functioning normally. But it is not clear why the pH is high. The media itself shouldn’t raise the pH of seawater, but maybe it was surface treated somehow.

 

[LittleMaui]

Thanks for the help. Just for reference, I'm using ARM Course Media (Extra Large), and ZeoMag.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I can't recall which media had the high pH issue. I can't find the thread right now.