pH is among the top three params I recommend not testing for in the first ~6 months of the tank. Im on year 17 never running it once
most folks are bound and determined to make use of the testers they bought, its best to wait a long time before tinkering with it.
pH nitrate and po4 detailing is changing the hobby into an invasion prone mess
the chances your actual readings are correct as stated is about 10% likely if we take reading comparison threads in the chem forum between testers as any sort of indicator. You can do so much more with direct feeding of corals, knowing what light intensity and spectrum to run, and heavy busy work like water changes and manually guiding out cyano vs any sort of chemical detailing in new reefs especially if they are nanos vs large tanks. nanos that get water changes can easily use higher % water exchanged to offset the excellent feeding to really kick in early coral growth. new systems that practice hands off mode/ chemistry detailing are in the absolutely highest likely to get dinos soon category. while pH measure and response isn't implicated much in dinos issues, that mindset sure is. at no time will pH matter in my very old nano its focus has been heavy feeding and water changes since 06
phosphate detailing inevitably follows pH detailing for most, and that's a dinos accelerating habit approach. in the very least, make no adjustments to params that aren't measured on calibrated digital readouts where a very very high % of comparison threads shows consistency, such as seneye monitoring for nh3. now that's consistent, tank to tank
