Dan H

That's way more inventive than I could have ever dreamed up. Looks like it works well too.

You'll probably want to change out your carbon when you get home tonight and get some fresh stuff in there to help pull out the ink.

My house will hit 1000 when I have people over or sometimes when we just don't go outside all weekend. Also, since the tank has an exhaust fan, it's pushing out air from the house which will pull in air through cracks and seams elsewhere. So I'm sure that's helping keep the CO2 down some.

I've seen inconsistencies in the pH, but there are so many factors that affect it that I'm not always sure what is the cause. I have noticed that pulling outside air for the skimmer definitely raised the pH overall - both the upper limit and lower limit. So that would suggest the opposite of what you're seeing.

I recently added CO2 scrubber to the air intake for the skimmer as well, and that brought it up even further. On my tank, the 3 biggest influencers of pH are the skimmer, the lighting, and the ambient CO2 levels. Obviously when the lights are on, CO2 is being consumed by the photosynthetic creatures so the pH goes up. If the skimmer isn't working efficiently, the pH goes down - sometimes a LOT. If the CO2 in the house goes above 1000ppm for a while, then sometimes the tank's pH will start to go down.

Interestingly if you are seeing the pH go down when the pump is on, then perhaps it's getting stale air? Is it well ventilated where the pump it?

Here's my charts.

This is just a theory, but I saw similar things too when experimenting. I only got good results when the skimmer was pulling in the fresh air. I suspect this may be because of the contact time with water, the skimmer producing microbubbles so dramatically more surface area for air/water contact, and volume - the skimmer is holding close to 1 cubic foot of water/air vs a tiny column of air from the air stone.

Beautiful pictures!

Perhaps if someone is going to go there, they could see if anyone else needs some stuff? I'd be interested.

It was! Which reminds me, I demand updates! Hopefully things continue to look good?

Just a quick lesson to learn from my mistake... So I mounted the Kessils using a 2" 10-32 threaded bolt. What I didn't realize is that I screwed the bolt in too far, and it was pushing against the cooling fan, preventing it from running. My Kessils kept overheating and shutting off after only a few minutes of being turned on. I was really starting to get frustrated and couldn't figure out what was going on... So after quite a few attempts at checking the wiring, and other things, I started taking down each light, taking them apart, and cleaning them very well. When I got the 5th one torn apart, I noticed the fan had some circular scuff marks on it dead center. That's when I realized that it was the bolt sticking in too far. UGH! There goes a half day of troubleshooting.

In other news, because of this, I checked every light and 1 of them does have a dead fan. I've contacted Kessil to see if they can get me a new one, otherwise it looks to be just a simple computer fan, so I may end up just buying one on Amazon to replace it.

It ranges from about 3-5"

So at 75% intensity I am now getting easily into the 300's at the top of the live rock... Just what I was hoping for. So not the question is how much heat will be generated.

Indeed, thank you for pointing that out! I will report on the increase in PAR.

I do. I just have 8 instead of 4 now.

Patience can be beat into submission using money... That or you can find someone in Houston selling what you want.

Uh oh.

So lazy.

Bought them. The experiment will commence!

Found it. Thanks for the heads up!

Oh really? Hmm. Got a link?

Na, that's ok. But I appreciate the offer. I'm gonna just sit still for a bit.

Gotta get me one of those A2000's! LOL!

So far my par reading with the new par meter have been disappointing, but I'm starting to think that perhaps it doesn't matter... Everything is fairly happy and has good color... Perhaps it's not perfection but it is worth another $1600? Not sure really so I'm torn as to whether or not I'm going to get 4 more kessils or not. I am for sure going to swap out the BML on the frag tank for a Reefbrite blue, and upgrade the reefbrites on the display to their XHO model.

Very helpful. Shows that they are nowhere near as powerful as everyone thinks.

LOL - resist buying any corals at the swap. Good luck on that one. I know we never succeed on that one.

After a few adjustments I think the CaRX is basically back to tuned properly. I does appear that I may be able to consume slightly less CO2 so that's good.

Came home the other day and found my urchin spawning. He's done this a few times the last few weeks. Must be the season.

https://youtu.be/fnxDtY5FZp0

Remember my little stomatella problem?

For real? They're INSIDE the skimmer now?!

I was more thinking about little nuclear bombs flying around if it gets chopped up.