Electronic ball valve for CO² scrubber

[Steve2020]

So, I'm definitely starting to see a pH bump which is encouraging. My lows are getting higher, and so are the peaks. Ignore the 8.4. I do water changes in the sump (I did a water change today) and the freshly mixed red sea blue bucket salt must have a fairly high pH.

I did finally hit my target of 8.3 today. Which is probably a little easier on the weekends when no one is here at the office. I'm curious to see if the trend continues and I can keep this pH up during the week as well when all the "breathers" are here

Another interesting side effect of this is that I was dosing 65ml/day to maintain 8.5 dkh. Now, two days later, I'm dosing 80ml/day and I haven't been able to get back to 8.5 dkh since setting this up due to the rapidly increased consumption. Calcium demand has gone up too. Apparently the corals are liking the elevated pH.

However, I'm running into something unusual I wasn't prepared for, and I don't know if it's a big deal or not.

Since I'm running this as a recirc, the air is obviously quite moist. Which is not a bad thing as from what I've been told, as the media likes humidity. I'm starting to get some water build up in the line. My scrubber reactors are probably 3 feet above the skimmer, so the intake air flows up and the output flows back down into the skimmer.

I can't tell if this is as bad as it will get and most of it will eventually get pulled through via evaporation, or if it will start to accumulate and actually begin to restrict air flow.

Has anyone experienced this before and if so, what did you do about it?

I get condensation in my airlines and has never been a problem with restricted airflow but I also have 6 lines exiting my skimmer. When I feed my fish I shut down my return pump and skimmer and the little bit of water in the lines backs into the skimmer cup. As you can see the air gets past whatever water is in the lines anyways.

After feed mode:

 

[DeputyDog95]

I get condensation in my airlines and has never been a problem with restricted airflow but I also have 6 lines exiting my skimmer. When I feed my fish I shut down my return pump and skimmer and the little bit of water in the lines backs into the skimmer cup. As you can see the air gets past whatever water is in the lines anyways.

After feed mode:

There is a dip in my line after it comes through the wall and up to the reactor, which keeps the water from draining back into the cup. So it collects in the dip...

That was creative using the stock lid and the holes are already drilled in them.

I have to ask though... How do you get the 6 lines to join into one?

 

[Steve2020]

There is a dip in my line after it comes through the wall and up to the reactor, which keeps the water from draining back into the cup. So it collects in the dip...

That was creative using the stock lid and the holes are already drilled in them.

I have to ask though... How do you get the 6 lines to join into one?

Here are some photos of my setup. I also bring in fresh air from the furnace outdoor air intake into the scrubber. The fresh air airline runs approx 60ft. I also run an electronic 2 way ball valve controlled by the Profilux to bring in dirty air to control the PH high level. If I didn't bring in dirty air my PH gets to high for my liking (8.55-8.6).
If you have any questions just ask!

PH prior to scrubber:

PH with scrubber but no recirc and only was running 2 lines out of the skimmer lid at the time:

PH with scrubber recirc and fresh air to scrubber. You can see the valve in operation cycling from 8.45 to 8.43:

 

[shakey]

My scrubber accumulates water in bottom of reactor too. I just empty it out once a week. Doesn’t seem to bother anything. Moisture will enhance PH boost though. You might want to leave a little water in bottom of reactor.

 

[Steve2020]

Here are some photos of my setup. I also bring in fresh air from the furnace outdoor air intake into the scrubber. The fresh air airline runs approx 60ft. I also run an electronic 2 way ball valve controlled by the Profilux to bring in dirty air to control the PH high level. If I didn't bring in dirty air my PH gets to high for my liking (8.55-8.6).
If you have any questions just ask!

PH prior to scrubber:

PH with scrubber recirc and only was running 2 lines out of the skimmer lid at the time:

I messed up on the previous post with the wrong description. Sorry about that.

Scrubber with Recirc but only running 2 lines from skimmer lid

Scrubber with no recirc:

PH with scrubber recirc and fresh air to scrubber. You can see the valve in operation cycling from 8.45 to 8.43:

 

[DeputyDog95]

Here are some photos of my setup. I also bring in fresh air from the furnace outdoor air intake into the scrubber. The fresh air airline runs approx 60ft. I also run an electronic 2 way ball valve controlled by the Profilux to bring in dirty air to control the PH high level. If I didn't bring in dirty air my PH gets to high for my liking (8.55-8.6).
If you have any questions just ask!

PH prior to scrubber:

PH with scrubber but no recirc and only was running 2 lines out of the skimmer lid at the time:

PH with scrubber recirc and fresh air to scrubber. You can see the valve in operation cycling from 8.45 to 8.43:

That's wild how well your setup is working. And now I see how you got those 6 lines to eventually join into one. Lots of "Y" fittings!

I think you and I are running the same dual jumbo BRS cannisters.

Very nice install!

 

[DeputyDog95]

My scrubber accumulates water in bottom of reactor too. I just empty it out once a week. Doesn’t seem to bother anything. Moisture will enhance PH boost though. You might want to leave a little water in bottom of reactor.

I haven't bothered adding water to the reactors with all the water accumulating in the lines. The input air is extremely humid and the clear lines are always "misted". I think if you were not running a recirc setup, a little water in the cannisters would be a must.

 

[DeputyDog95]

So, to update everyone on my progress.

I finally hit 8.31 today and the solenoid switched to ambient air. It's been only scrubbing since the install on Thurs afternoon, getting as high as 8.3 but not above to trigger the valve change.

I'm still blown away by Ca and Alk consumption increase. Red Sea liquid additives are a 3 to 1 in case anyone is wondering why they're not balanced. I was dosing 65ml/day of Alk on Thurs and now I'm up to almost 90ml/day, and still haven't been able to hit my usual targeted 8.5 dkh target.

EDIT: I just finally hit 8.5dkh at almost 90ml/day. Crazy.

So I pulled the intake line to the scrubber and dumped the "scrubber juice" that was bouncing around in the lines into to a 4-cup Pyrex container to show you guys a pic. Turns out it was maybe 10-15ml at best. Not really all that much. However, it's odd how milky white it is... Any idea why? The water in the intake line has never come into contact with the scrubber media. And I opened the drains on the bottom of the media containers and they were bone dry. What would cause the solution in the lines to look like this?

I'm going to do a little experiment. I had my DC skimmer set to 3 out of 5, or basically 60%. That resulted in a dark soupy skimmate and seemed like it was working fairly efficiently at that power/air setting. I figured, why not jam it up to 100%? I opened the gate valve to lower the water level in the skimmer to hopefully dry out the skimmate and not just simply wet skim out a cup of light green water every day.

That should be 40% more air being scrubbed, right?

EDIT: I just noticed the drain plug on the right cannister wasn't fully seated, so I may have been sucking in a little ambient air while scrubbing. I just tightened them both down. Curious to see if that has any impact.

The air definitely doesn't flow as well through the scrubber, so I'm going to have to play with the ball valve on the fresh air intake side so they match when it switches back and forth. No shocker there... Surprised there wasn't a bigger difference though as it was pretty close to the same performance.

EDIT: A 15-20% restriction on the fresh air intake ball valve matched the performance of the scrubbed air flow. So the skimmer should now work the same whether it's scrubbed or ambient air.

Scrubbed Skimmer Intake:

Ambient Air Skimmer Intake:

 

[Steve2020]

So, to update everyone on my progress.

I finally hit 8.31 today and the solenoid switched to ambient air. It's been only scrubbing since the install on Thurs afternoon, getting as high as 8.3 but not above to trigger the valve change.

I'm still blown away by Ca and Alk consumption increase. Red Sea liquid additives are a 3 to 1 in case anyone is wondering why they're not balanced. I was dosing 65ml/day of Alk on Thurs and now I'm up to almost 90ml/day, and still haven't been able to hit my usual targeted 8.5 dkh target.

EDIT: I just finally hit 8.5dkh at almost 90ml/day. Crazy.

So I pulled the intake line to the scrubber and dumped the "scrubber juice" that was bouncing around in the lines into to a 4-cup Pyrex container to show you guys a pic. Turns out it was maybe 10-15ml at best. Not really all that much. However, it's odd how milky white it is... Any idea why? The water in the intake line has never come into contact with the scrubber media. And I opened the drains on the bottom of the media containers and they were bone dry. What would cause the solution in the lines to look like this?

I'm going to do a little experiment. I had my DC skimmer set to 3 out of 5, or basically 60%. That resulted in a dark soupy skimmate and seemed like it was working fairly efficiently at that power/air setting. I figured, why not jam it up to 100%? I opened the gate valve to lower the water level in the skimmer to hopefully dry out the skimmate and not just simply wet skim out a cup of light green water every day.

That should be 40% more air being scrubbed, right?

EDIT: I just noticed the drain plug on the right cannister wasn't fully seated, so I may have been sucking in a little ambient air while scrubbing. I just tightened them both down. Curious to see if that has any impact.

The air definitely doesn't flow as well through the scrubber, so I'm going to have to play with the ball valve on the fresh air intake side so they match when it switches back and forth. No shocker there... Surprised there wasn't a bigger difference though as it was pretty close to the same performance.

EDIT: A 15-20% restriction on the fresh air intake ball valve matched the performance of the scrubbed air flow. So the skimmer should now work the same whether it's scrubbed or ambient air.

Scrubbed Skimmer Intake:

Ambient Air Skimmer Intake:

For some reason I can't view the videos. It plays but the screen is blank.
Setting 5 will bring in more air but in my opinion not the best way to setup that skimmer unless it is way undersized for your bio load. Their are various opinions on how to setup a skimmer so I am going to leave that one alone. With higher air flow through the scrubber you will burn through the media much faster so be ready for that. FYI I have my skimmer set to 3 and works great. I followed the skimmer tuning video from BRS and I am happy with it. It explains a lot about running too rich or too lean.
As far as the milky substance, that is really strange. It looks like precipitate but I can't see how that could happen. I looked at your photos and it looks like one of the airlines is white but hard to tell. If it is, could there be a decomposing of the die in the rubber hose? Very strange.

 

[DeputyDog95]

For some reason I can't view the videos. It plays but the screen is blank.
Setting 5 will bring in more air but in my opinion not the best way to setup that skimmer unless it is way undersized for your bio load. Their are various opinions on how to setup a skimmer so I am going to leave that one alone. With higher air flow through the scrubber you will burn through the media much faster so be ready for that. FYI I have my skimmer set to 3 and works great. I followed the skimmer tuning video from BRS and I am happy with it. It explains a lot about running too rich or too lean.
As far as the milky substance, that is really strange. It looks like precipitate but I can't see how that could happen. I looked at your photos and it looks like one of the airlines is white but hard to tell. If it is, could there be a decomposing of the die in the rubber hose? Very strange.

That's weird you can't see the videos. Not sure what's up with that.

I tuned my skimmer using the same video. And it worked perfectly. Some great tips in the video about tuning a DC skimmer and how the gate valve controls the rate of skimmate collection vs the changing the speed of the bump to affect the amount of air which controls the consistency (lighter or darker) of the skimmate.

However I recently had a seam go bad on my previous existing tank and just moved everything into a much larger system. It's probably, including the sump, about 50 gallons bigger. So yeah, the skimmer is now a bit undersized at this point, especially considering my bio load. Nutrients are still spot on though. I'll have to keep an eye on my nutrients with skimmer turned up though. I do think with the gate valve opened and slowing the rate of skimmate collection, I'll hopefully keep the same level of skimming without stripping nutrients out.

If the scrubber works better at this setting and my nutrients do fall off, I'll just do what I always do and start feeding the fish more. I keep a pretty strict feeding regimen to maintain nutrient levels. As long as you don't change your mechanical filters or skimming in a significant way, I've found its easy control nutrient deficiencies with food. And the fish certainly don't complain

Some of the stock skimmer tubing is white and it's old! Problem 5 years or more. Heck, the tubing cracked when we unplugging the silencer. You may be right. I'll have to swap that tubing out and see if that fixes the oddly colored water.

ill happily burn through more media if I can pin that pH to a range of 8.2 and 8.3. I never seen a single thing cause the tank to respond so quickly in such a positive manner.

 

[shakey]

I'm glad you are having success. It's been an excellent addition to my tank.

 

[DeputyDog95]

I'm glad you are having success. It's been an excellent addition to my tank.

So far so good.

Alk consumption went up by around 40% in less than a week. That's a good sign.

I knew CO2 was a bit of an issue because the pH would get much higher on the weekends when it was just me in the office, as compared to M-F with staff and customers.

A couple observations so far.

My scrubber is much higher than my skimmer and is located in the bathroom behind the tank on the wall. There is a hole to pass through ATO lines etc which is slightly lower than the top of the skimmer, and much lower than the scrubber. So there's a bit of a drip loop after it passes through the wall into the bathroom up to the scrubber, and it's collecting quite a bit of fluid from moisture build up. I have a float switch on my skimmer lid so it will never suck in skimmate. I let it go two days without draining it and it was really starting to pile up in the low point on the scrubber line intake. For now, I will keep draining it daily, manually. But I ordered a small single generic C02 scrubber canister from BRS with the same 3/8 fittings and I'm going to put it right below the pass through into the bathroom, inline between the skimmer lid and the scubber, so the moisture will just drip and accumulate in there instead. It's big enough where I probably won't have to mess with it more than once a month.

Turning up the DC skimmer from 3 to 5 to pull in more air seems to work fine. I had to lower the water level in the skimmer quite a bit to dry the foam out before collection. However, the color and consistency of the skimmate seems comparable to the 3 setting, with the downside being that a lot of grossness is collecting in the neck now so that will require more maintenance. I'm sure the air restriction going through the scrubber helps with skimmate consistency as well. Setting 3 pre scrubber and setting 3 post scrubber are definitely different as evidenced by manually setting the solenoid to fresh air and seeing the difference in the volume of air. I think I mentioned it previously, but I had to close the ball valve on the fresh air intake about 20 percent to they would match regardless of the solenoid position.

I'm still now sure how people are pegging their pH at a specific number using a scrubber. My previous swing was 7.7-8 to 8.1 on average (not including weekends) and now it runs from 8.1 to 8.33 and has never gone higher (I have the solenoid set to open at 8.35).

Considering, the way I understand it, tenths of a point are factors of 10 in the pH scale, that is a giant increase. But I'm still getting a two tenths swings from when the lights go out until the they come back on the next day. And that is with still running a fuge wtih a reverse light cycle.

Is it really possible to peg a certain number or is what I'm experiencing more realistic in most applications?

 

[shakey]

I think your results are good and it’s about what you are going to get. In order to peg it you will probably have to dose some high PH Alk additive. I don’t recall if you stated you use soda ash or what but sodium hydroxide is probably your next step if you want to peg it.
By the way I use a skimate locker reservoir to collect skim. If you had one that would help prevent fluid from getting into your reactor line.

 

[shakey]

I think your results are good and it’s about what you are going to get. In order to peg it you will probably have to dose some high PH Alk additive. I don’t recall if you stated you use soda ash or what but sodium hydroxide is probably your next step if you want to peg it.
By the way I use a skimate locker reservoir to collect skim. If you had one that would help prevent fluid from getting into your reactor line.

Another bonus of sodium hydroxide is that it could save you a lot of money. If your fresh air kicks on a lot it saves CO2 media.

 

[DeputyDog95]

I think your results are good and it’s about what you are going to get. In order to peg it you will probably have to dose some high PH Alk additive. I don’t recall if you stated you use soda ash or what but sodium hydroxide is probably your next step if you want to peg it.
By the way I use a skimate locker reservoir to collect skim. If you had one that would help prevent fluid from getting into your reactor line.

I'm only dosing traditional liquid alk and ca. No soda ash or anything comparable.

I'd like to do a skimmate reservoir, but I don't have any more room under my sump and I can't find one that won't float. Even if just to not mess with emptying the cup as frequently. But yeah, would probably help keep moisture down in the line for sure.

 

[DeputyDog95]

Another bonus of sodium hydroxide is that it could save you a lot of money. If your fresh air kicks on a lot it saves CO2 media.

My setup has been running a week, basically full time scrubbing, as I think it has only shut off once or twice now because it won't go over 8.3. However, the media hasn't shown any signs of turning blue. I am running two giant cannisters though.

Wouldn't dosing sodium hydroxide mess with your salinity?

I already creep up about two to three tenths of a ppt weekly dosing my alk product and have to lower the PPT of replacement water during changes to compensate.

 

[shakey]

. I’m sure salinity would rise but you can simply offset that with water change if you have it automated. If not you can simply dip a little out and let you ATO add Rodi water. Sodium Hydroxide is a little sketchy as it is acid but I’m starting to use it mixing it in with my regular Alk solution.

 

[shakey]

. I’m sure salinity would rise but you can simply offset that with water change if you have it automated. If not you can simply dip a little out and let you ATO add Rodi water. Sodium Hydroxide is a little sketchy as it is acid but I’m starting to use it mixing it in with my regular Alk solution.

If you are staying close to 8.3 I don’t think I would change anything though. That’s excellent PH. I’m just playing around with things that I probably shouldn’t be lol.

 

[shakey]

If you are staying close to 8.3 I don’t think I would change anything though. That’s excellent PH. I’m just playing around with things that I probably shouldn’t be lol.

For what it’s worth. I did peg my PH but couldn’t keep my Alk down. I think you have enough Alk usage to peg it without Alk raising. I only have 4-5 SPS frags and some LPs so my tank doesn’t use a lot of Alk right now.

 

[DeputyDog95]

. I’m sure salinity would rise but you can simply offset that with water change if you have it automated. If not you can simply dip a little out and let you ATO add Rodi water. Sodium Hydroxide is a little sketchy as it is acid but I’m starting to use it mixing it in with my regular Alk solution.

Not sure I'm ready to go there yet with the sodium hydroxide. You're not the first person to mention it. I'll have to do more research and get a better understanding of how it all works.

Right now, I seem to be holding steady at a base of 8.1 and a peak of 8.3. Which is pretty good and from what I've read online, and is identical to the great barrier reef in the summer. If it's good enough for the GBR, it should be good enough for me All kidding aside, this is a massive jump from 7.8 to 8.1 and I'm seeing the results in a week with a 40% increase in Alk consumption. Heck, I even saw hermit crabs spawning last night after the lights went out. I've had snails do it, but this is a first for me with hermit crabs.