Really odd ORP readings

lbacha · Jan 11, 2020

So I don’t normally look at ORP unless it spikes in one direction drastically but lately (last 10 days a) it has been rapidly spiking down about 50 points then going back up every few hrs. I was wondering if anyone else has seen this and had an idea what may be causing it.

my tank is doing fine and everything is growing so I have no plans to change something but I was wondering if this may be an indicator of something I should worry about.

Picture of the tanks in question

SPR1968 · Jan 11, 2020

Mine does exactly the same, and to be honest I don’t take any notice, other than just keeping an eye on it.

Apex comes with the probe, but if it stopped working I certainly wouldn’t bother to replace it.

Have a read of this excellent article if you haven’t already seen it. It might make your head hurt though! Lol

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-12/rhf/feature/index.htm

lbacha · Jan 11, 2020

SPR1968 said:
Mine does exactly the same, and to be honest I don’t take any notice, other than just keeping an eye on it.

Apex comes with the probe, but if it stopped working I certainly wouldn’t bother to replace it.

Have a read of this excellent article if you haven’t already seen it. It might make your head hurt though! Lol

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-12/rhf/feature/index.htm

Yeah I really don’t pay ORP much attention as so many things affect it. It is just odd that this just started happening after 2 years of use. I’m wondering if I need to clean my probe. I do agree if the probe went bad I probably wouldn’t replace it. It would be really nice if apex made it so you could add a second ph probe in its place

Randy Holmes-Farley · Jan 11, 2020

There's no time scale on the graph to usefully interpret it, but rapid spikes are not likely real unless they coincide with something you do, like adding fish food or supplements.

robbyg · Jan 11, 2020

lbacha said:
Yeah I really don’t pay ORP much attention as so many things affect it. It is just odd that this just started happening after 2 years of use. I’m wondering if I need to clean my probe. I do agree if the probe went bad I probably wouldn’t replace it. It would be really nice if apex made it so you could add a second ph probe in its place

Your probe is probably dying. Whenever mine are dying the reading start to jump all over the place and then they go super low or super high and stay there. Calibration will not get it back on track and at that point you know its done.

ca1ore · Jan 11, 2020

That’s the ‘problem’ with ORP. Fluctuating readings never seem to track to any useful intervention. The only semi useful purpose is either with ozone or when running a sulfur reactor. I run the latter and when I see tank ORP going down it prompts me to check the reactor to see if I need to up the flow.

lbacha · Jan 11, 2020

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
There's no time scale on the graph to usefully interpret it, but rapid spikes are not likely real unless they coincide with something you do, like adding fish food or supplements.

It’s a 24h period, and it doesn’t correspond with anything I can identify. I usually see a drop when I do a water change or when manually dose certain things but these spikes are just odd. I was wondering if they indicate an issue with the probe which is why I was wondering if anyone else has seen something similar before their probe died.