3rd chamber on CO2 reactor?
 

Has anyone added a 3rd media chamber on the output of their CO2 reactor to try to even more increase the pH/reduce the last bits of carbonic acid? Thinking about ordering another reactor to try to get my pH above 7.9

Charles

I'm have PH issue too. Likely from the calcium reactor. I only have an older single chamber that outputs to a cup
That slowly overflows out into the tank


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Another thoughts is low PH. Would that cause issues for corals?

Is there a big benefit to adding on a second chamber to my CA reactor?
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Well I went ahead and re-purposes an old diy kalk stirrer into a second chamber


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First off I've never worried about ph and chasing numbers. That being said.... I added a TLF reactor I had lying around with fine ARM media. Modified the input and output to 1/4 John Guess fittings. Media in TLF reactor needs a top up every time I top up the main chamber with coarse media so there is sufficiently low ph to dissolve the fine ARM media.

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I guess mines technically a second chamber. But I hope it bumps up the PH


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Been kind of tempted to add a second chamber myself. Seems to me even if chasing pH isn't that big of a deal, if just seeing the media deplete in the second chamber means that you're squeezing more life/function out of the CO2 that is otherwise just going to float away then that's a win in itself.

But I have been kind of wondering if it would be better not to dip so much at night. I recently started dripping kalk in at night as an experiment. (Years and years ago I ran both a kalk stirrer and a calcium reactor and I kind of look back on those days as the glory days of SPS for me and I guess it's sort of my "reef aquarium mid life crisis" that I'm seeking to relive those days, but I digress :lol:). Anyhow so far I can't say I really notice a difference with the pH when the kalk drip is on, but it's only dripping 15 minutes every hour between midnight and 8am so there is room to increase it. But so far it doesn't look like kalk does much to stop the pH dip.

My other thought I've been kind of wondering about is just setting the controller to turn off the CO2 solenoid at night and see what that does. I suppose down the road when my wee little frags aren't quite so wee, that this strategy might mean the reactor won't keep up, but for now it seems dubious to me that there'd be a huge difference in my Ca and Alk #'s if the reactor wasn't at 6.7 for a few hours of the night. Hard to say though.

In the end though if the tank inhabitants look fine enough, does it really matter what the pH does? I remember Brad always would say something like "my tank stopped having pH issues the moment I stopped measuring pH."

Which brings me to my last muse for now, which is my probe that I use on my tank is kaput. My good probe I use for the pH controller but the "bad" or old probe is measuring the tank and just giving me a nice little graph on the controller webpage but it's pretty clear even from the graphs that it needs to be recalibrated on a weekly basis. So then is it worthwhile to spend $80 to replace a probe for a nice little graph, or heck would something like this be a bad idea? (Because it's kind of hard to argue against $8 versus $80 plus shipping??) http://www.ebay.ca/itm/BNC-Electrode...cAAOSw3KFWb9xT

I lost a bunch of sps a while ago. I have no idea why. Only big change is lower ph. So may be pointless but if I can get it back over 8 I think my tank would be happier.

I did some testes of the effluent after my main. Single chamber reactor then after my diy add on chamber and the ph is about 0.25-0.27 higher

After reactor
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After second add on chamber
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I also observed the ph slowly climb as the effluent sat in a cup. Adding an airline to the cup accelerates this. Which makes me think of maybe add a settling chamber with an air stone. Or output effluent in front of skimmer intake. Maybe be stage 3 :)


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Where do you have your pH probe? I have the same reactor myself, I have the effluent into a little cup that overflows into the tank, and the probe sits in there. If I add a second chamber I still want the pH probe on the first chamber effluent so I was thinking of DIY'ing some kind of inline probe holder.

I drilled a hole in the lid. Then tapped in threads and added one here

Probe holder was a waterproof wire connector from the hardware store. Was a tight fit!

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The tests of outputs weew just from dripping into a cup with a ph probe




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Gents, consider using the finest calcium carbonate media you can for your second or final chamber. This should increase the effectiveness of that final chamber. Also to combat lower pH associated with CA reactors dose calcium hydroxide as a suplement with a doser or in your top off water if applicable. Alternatively there are alkaline filter cartridges available for RO filters which add calcium and magnesium to your source water to bring pH back up.

I'll look into that filter add one. Avoiding kalk as I refill my top off container daily and it would be a pain to get to and mix.

I'm thinking of using one of theses as a settling pond for the effluent to offgas. Then overflow and drip into the tank. May also put an airstone in to accelerate it

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I saw a couple of videos today where they used that method of airstones in an effluent bucket, let me know how yours works?

Charles

Will do! I'll give it a test tonight or tomorrow


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My once super clean sump is getting so crowded! I'm going to try the big container first (prob shlold have started with the small one). To see how much it changes once it has more off had time. Then I'll add an air stone and see how it changes
So far the fresh drip is at 6.6



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Okay. Swapped to smaller container first to see if a bigger settling pool makes a difference. This is like a ph test-a-thon
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Nice , following along . Having same issues.
I just pu a kalk stirrer to add to my ato . But was also thinking to add second chamber after cal reactor .

So the results may be a bit skewed as I started da don tests at lunch and it's now 9pm so ph naturally drops in the tank.

Another slightly screwy thing. Ph in reactor is currently higher than my effluent output. Makes no sense unless the probe needs to be calibrated inside the reactor. It's a apex lab grade probe that was calibrated 5-6m ago when I set up the reactor.

The probe im using to test effluent is my standard In sump ph probe and it was re calibrated last week

Adding the second media tower raised the effluent approx 0.26 ph

Adding the effluent drop cup raises it about 0.1ph. smaller

Adding the airstone to the drip cup made a huge leap of 0.36 after about 10 min in the cup

Was 6.44 before air stone and its 6.81 10 min later. So the airstone has the largest effect.

Ohhh 6.83 slowly climbing! Next step will. W to try the larger settling container and see if more air space / buble time makes a difference. I suspect it might but will only be worth the extra space if it's a large difference


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Photo for referencehttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...bbb853aedb.jpg
And up to 6.85 since the last post


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Just curious, did the PH in your tank raise ?

soda lime
 

add a bunch of this into a reactor in line with your protein skimmer air intake...


on the 18th the soda lime was all used up,, you can see the huge dip,, replaced it that evening..

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So far my tank his holding at 7.7ph that being said my lights have not turned on yet. It was dead stable at 7.69-7.7 all night

The effluent is staying around 7.56-7.6 Which is a huge increase.

Outputting the drip Ito the skimmer would probably negate the need for the air pump. So may look into this later. Although you would loose the settling cup advantage but it may be worth it to cleanup crap building up in my sump!

Later I may try removing the second chamber and dropping from single chamber into the cup to see how much PH I loose

Either way interesting experiments. I'm excited to check back tonight and see how the tank does once the lights are on for a few hours.

I also have been tweaking my co2 output this morning to keep it more stable in the reactor rather than fully relying on the solenoid to constantly turn it on and ofd


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