Ph! Kalk not working

Phillyd1990 · Feb 4, 2018

sooo ive been dosing and recently added kalk to raise ph only to raise my alk with ph staying the same..any suggestions?

Finhead · Feb 4, 2018

Have you tried to recalibarte your probe, I can't see adding Kalk and not bumping your PH up since it's has a PH of 12.4.

sghera64 · Feb 4, 2018

Phillyd1990 said:
sooo ive been dosing and recently added kalk to raise ph only to raise my alk with ph staying the same..any suggestions?

I’ve seen this before when house was closed up and CO2 levels inside are elevated. Your Ca(OH)2 is essentially scrubbing your home of CO2. That drives or alk up. Since your home dwarfs your tank, there is still plenty of CO2 around to keep the pH depressed.

You will need to bubble low CO2 air into the system:
1.) use CO2 scrubber ($$)
2.) pull air in from outside through PVC/tubing and into your skimmer, or a modified air pump and air-stone.

GoVols · Feb 4, 2018

Phillyd1990 said:
sooo ive been dosing and recently added kalk to raise ph only to raise my alk with ph staying the same..any suggestions?

I'm with @Finhead

Start by re-calibrating your Apex probe and wish you had a Salifert ph kit to cross check.

@sghera64 is spot on too and I'm a window raising getting the C02 out junkie ;Wacky, but you'd think kalk would raise your ph.

Phillyd1990 · Feb 4, 2018

Finhead said:
Have you tried to recalibarte your probe, I can't see adding Kalk and not bumping your PH up since it's has a PH of 12.4.

Just got my apex a couple days ago so its newly calibrated.

sghera64 said:
I’ve seen this before when house was closed up and CO2 levels inside are elevated. Your Ca(OH)2 is essentially scrubbing your home of CO2. That drives or alk up. Since your home dwarfs your tank, there is still plenty of CO2 around to keep the pH depressed.

You will need to bubble low CO2 air into the system:
1.) use CO2 scrubber ($$)
2.) pull air in from outside through PVC/tubing and into your skimmer, or a modified air pump and air-stone.

honesestly co2 scrubber is the only thing i can think of. Ive had this problem since I started the hobby but with ny last system kalk kept my ph at 8.3 but i was doing 2 tbls per gal now im doing half of that. But my alk was always above 9 which i dont want either. Cant open a window cause its 20 degrees here lol

GoVols · Feb 4, 2018

Phillyd1990 said:
Just got my apex a couple days ago so its newly calibrated.

honesestly co2 scrubber is the only thing i can think of. Ive had this problem since I started the hobby but with ny last system kalk kept my ph at 8.3 but i was doing 2 tbls per gal now im doing half of that. But my alk was always above 9 which i dont want either. Cant open a window cause its 20 degrees here lol

PhillyD,
Are you going to get a Co2 scrubber?

If so, drop the Salifert ph test kit in your cart

rock_lobster · Feb 4, 2018

Yes its quite tough to keep pH up in a tight small home.

GoVols · Feb 4, 2018

rock_lobster said:
Yes its quite tough to keep pH up in a tight small home.

(lol)
I got my town homes windows open, right now

Gotta love an old squeaky house

bubbaque · Feb 4, 2018

My ph stays low with kalk also. I started dosing saturated kalk recently at 6000 mls a day (250 mls per hr) in my 250 gl system and I got a ph bump of .1. Kalk will use the co2 in the water but if your just aerating with high co2 air, which just puts it back in the water you probably won't get much of a bump in ph.

WWIII · Feb 4, 2018

I switched over to the new diy 2 part @Randy Holmes-Farley posted and it raised my ph between .2 and .3 on average. I dose 120 ml of both parts in a 250 gallon system daily. I got rid of the kalkwasser in my ato. This would obviously affect ph differently person to person, based on dosage required. My ph now runs 8.25 to 8.45...

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/new-diy-two-part-recipes-with-higher-ph-boost.344500/

Randy Holmes-Farley · Feb 5, 2018

As folks have mentioned, if the aeration of the tank with high CO2 air is strong enough, adding high pH alk additives (say, limewater/kalkwasser) cannot adequately overcome that rapid entry of more CO2.

Your meter shows a pH of 7.96. That seems fine. What pH range are you seeing?

When you say you just got the APEX, and so is calibrated, you calibrated the pH meter yourself, right?