Calcium reactor question..

[Eric B]

Well that rules that thought out! I saw where you are running the extra course media in a single chamber GEO reactor so you might have to start slowly lowering the ph because it takes slightly lower ph to dissolve more of it at a time. I run a mixture of the small and medium stuff in mine and in both chambers as well. I would say it's about 75% small media to about 25% medium stuff as I had no luck running the courser stuff in any chamber in my MRC reactor. Before I would change media though I would try lower the PH in there by maybe .10 every few days and testing effluent out and tank every day to see if that gets you there or helps. When I tried course media I ran my reactor down in the 5.9 PH range and it would sorta keep it stable for a week or so and media was not melting into powder. Smaller media will melt at that low of a PH (I know from trial and error) but doesn't effect the courser stuff that much but I would also adjust it down slowly. Keep us updated but you will probably have to at least test tank everyday until it is consistent over a few weeks.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Do you run bio pellets as I found out that alk gets depleted more when running them. I don't know about any of the other carbon dosing types (vodka, vinegar, etc) if they use up alk as well.

I don't think that any normal sort of organic carbon dosing will directly reduce alkalinity in the long term (there's no mechanism for that, unless you somehow add an acid such as vinegar and remove it as acetate), but reducing nutrients (especially phosphate) may increase calcification rates by corals, coralline algae, and possibly even increase abiotic precipitation of calcium carbonate, and so lower alkalinity that way.

 

[vpustovoytov]

Thank u Eric B I'll try lower my ph first