Time of day alk consumption?

[Gribbliest]

Hey all,

I wondered, with the advent of the KH Director, Trident, Alkatronic, Mindstream, etc if people would be happy to share their experience of whether they see a large difference in Alk consumption by time of day?

For instance, do you see more consumption when the lights are on or off?

I personally use the GHL KHD, and have seeing the largest dips between 12am and 2am, 3-4 hours after the lights go out. (I test every 2 hours).

What do you see?

 

[leepink23]

Hey all,

I wondered, with the advent of the KH Director, Trident, Alkatronic, Mindstream, etc if people would be happy to share their experience of whether they see a large difference in Alk consumption by time of day?

For instance, do you see more consumption when the lights are on or off?

I personally use the GHL KHD, and have seeing the largest dips between 12am and 2am, 3-4 hours after the lights go out. (I test every 2 hours).

What do you see?

I have a trident, test every 6 hours now, had tested every 3 hours. I also notice my lowest alkalinity is around 12am.

 

[Righteous]

I’ve have trident testing every 2 hours and the daytime swings were quite large, for me almost 0.5 - 1.0 dkh.

I now dose 2/3 of all my Triton elements during lights on, and the swing is down to about 0.1 a 0.2 dkh.

Anecdotal, but I believe my SPS growth and color have improved with the stability.

 

[Gribbliest]

I’ve have trident testing every 2 hours and the daytime swings were quite large, for me almost 0.5 - 1.0 dkh.

I now dose 2/3 of all my Triton elements during lights on, and the swing is down to about 0.1 a 0.2 dkh.

Anecdotal, but I believe my SPS growth and color have improved with the stability.

So you were seeing greater consumption during daylight?

 

[Righteous]

So you were seeing greater consumption during daylight?

Yes... lowest point was after lights off... but you could watch it drop rapidly during the day. I’ll see if I can dig up a graph.

 

[Righteous]

Here was a typical day. I’ve got a pretty heavily stocked tank. SPS mostly frags, but a couple of very fast growing montys and stylos.

 

[Righteous]

Another day.. not as bad but 0.5 dkh drop

 

[Gribbliest]

My last 3 days. You can see the drop around midnight each day. I have adaptive control enabled on the khd, it does keep it pretty tight - was just wondering what other people were experiencing!

 

[JimWelsh]

Alk Swing @ Night

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I've recently developed a way to do semi-continuous alkalinity monitoring of my tank, and get that data input into my Apex controller. Here is a graph of the total alkalinity of my 210 gallon tank over two days' time. I include my Amp_3 data, too...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

So you were seeing greater consumption during daylight?

that is what many folks report. Whether that is due to the lighting itself, or the pH change is not totally clear.

 

[2una]

Ditto here with lights on period the higher demand.
Carx with constant flow - lights on don't keep up - lights out plays catch up