PH Stability

Heavymman · Apr 22, 2019

Is there any way to keep my PH stable at night? I don’t have plans or room for a refugium with a reverse lighting schedule and I don’t need to dose for Alk yet otherwise I would dose Soda Ash solution at night. My ph swing 7.7 to 8.1.

MrObscura · Apr 22, 2019

Kalk can help, as can running a refugium on a reverse schedule. As you know.

But there's no reason to chase Ph. Simply forget about it.

LIreefguy · Apr 22, 2019

You just named the 2 ways to keep ph from going down so much at night

Unfortunately that’s all she wrote

Hitman · Apr 22, 2019

There's nothing wrong with the swing you have. Seeing you don't plan on using a fuge do you run a Skimmer? If so you could run a CO2 scrubber on the air intake and it may help if high CO2 in your home is the reason for the lower ph.

BestMomEver · Apr 22, 2019

Heavymman said:
Is there any way to keep my PH stable at night? I don’t have plans or room for a refugium with a reverse lighting schedule and I don’t need to dose for Alk yet otherwise I would dose Soda Ash solution at night. My ph swing 7.7 to 8.1.

Mine too. Mine sometimes goes below 7.7. I’ve done a few things... get a CO2 scrubber. It attaches to the air intake tube of your skimmer. Air passes through the media, into the skimmer, and helps neutralize CO2. Some people can run a hose from their skimmer to the outside to draw in fresh air but that’s not an option for me.

The other option is to create a refugium. My sump doesn’t have a refugium built in so I bought a small fresh water breeder box for live bearers. I attached it to the inside of my sump in the skimmer area and put a light over it. It works.

Heavymman · Apr 22, 2019

BestMomEver said:
Mine too. Mine sometimes goes below 7.7. I’ve done a few things... get a CO2 scrubber. It attaches to the air intake tube of your skimmer. Air passes through the media, into the skimmer, and helps neutralize CO2. Some people can run a hose from their skimmer to the outside to draw in fresh air but that’s not an option for me.

The other option is to create a refugium. My sump doesn’t have a refugium built in so I bought a small fresh water breeder box for live bearers. I attached it to the inside of my sump in the skimmer area and put a light over it. It works.

What breeder box do you use? I have been tinkering around for awhile to have a refugium but I have extremely limited space (I have a cube tank with a tight sump and space). I would prob just keep rock ruble in there for a small haven for pods. I don’t have any reason to grow out macro algae .