3rd chamber on CO2 reactor?

[SoloSK71]

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

[shiftline]

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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[shiftline]

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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[shiftline]

Well I went ahead and re-purposes an old diy kalk stirrer into a second chamber


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[Werbo]

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.

[shiftline]

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[shiftline]

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


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[Delphinus]

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 ). 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

[shiftline]

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


After second add on chamber


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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[Delphinus]

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.