DerrickH Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Im renting a house in Jarrell and there is a pretty intricate water softener system in the garage. From what I can tell, the line in from the meter goes to the softener and then out to the rest of the house. Is this normal? Reason I ask is its near impossible to get/keep the ph up on my water. Im lucky to stay at 7.9. If this is normal to have them plumbed this way, Im assuming I could tap into the "in" line on the softener and hook up my RO/DI unit to that. Assuming this would drastically increase the carbonate hardness of the water and buffer my ph. Whats yall's thoughts? Hydro, you have any experience with this in your endeavors? Currently Ive tee'd into my cold line for the washing machine so assuming at minimum, the softener would be ported to this, correct? TIA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 If you're using RODI, your unit will be stripping out essentially everything anyway. Softened water will extend the life of your filters and membranes however. And yes, i believe standard softener installs cover all water coming in to the house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Yes, very typical install is that the water line coming into the house goes directly into the water softener. This protects the plumbing and water appliances in the house from the normal sediment buildup it would accumulate from un-softened water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted April 26, 2012 Author Share Posted April 26, 2012 Well Im sick of dosing dump truck loads of baking soda and pickling lime only to have my ph be low....Im going to try running the softener in bypass, do a 40% water change and monitor the ph over a week and see what happens. Also going to extend my skimmer air line outside of the stand, and maybe install an air stone in the sump or OF box. The only thing that I can think of is C02 is high and no way for me to check it. Moved my chiller, helped but still not good enough, run my skimmer non stop. Plenty of surface aggitation as well. No canopy, open top tank....I shouldnt have such a problem keeping the ph up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Monnat Jr Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Have you tried topping off your water with store-bought RODI to eliminate your water supply as the source of your pH problems? Maybe a few weeks worth of RODI can tell you if that's your problem. I buy mine at Fishy Business for $0.50/gal, but you live much further away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 What sand are you using? What is your live rock load like? If you have a heavier silica based sand as opposed to a more carbonaceous sand, you won't have quite the buffering capacity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted April 26, 2012 Author Share Posted April 26, 2012 Rock is from prof, dry base rock from old coral reef. Sand is pure argonite. On my old tank I never had a problem keeping ph up. The water in RR was very hard though. The water in Jarrell is nowhere near as hard, and especially after its ran through the softener. My dkh has been very hard to maintain since I moved into this house so only thing I can assume is its the base water. I also changed to RSCP salt. Was using reef crystals before. Texas Nano picked up rock from prof as well and he has no problem with ph. He's using different sand but still argonite based I believe. I run a thin sandbed so dont think it could skew my ph that much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 If you are using RODI, hardness is out of the equation, because it strips *everything* out of the water. Silica based sands won't lower your pH, but they won't add buffering capacity. Give the CO2 stuff a try, because that might make a difference. You might try adding more aragonite sand to increase the carbonates that get dumped into the water. Just a thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted April 26, 2012 Author Share Posted April 26, 2012 Ok, so what do guys with bare bottom tanks do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonJones Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 What problems has your low pH been causing? I think I checked my pH once, about 6 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Monnat Jr Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 What problems has your low pH been causing? I think I checked my pH once, about 6 years ago. Do you just track alkalinity since it's proportional to pH and more important? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 He's got an apex, so he checks/logs it about once per second Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted April 26, 2012 Author Share Posted April 26, 2012 I check both. My dkh is actually measured in meq2 but the test kit I have is vague. Ive scaled it with ph before and they follow dynamically so I know when my ph is low, my dkh is low. If I add buffer e.g. baking soda, my ph rises no problem(higher carbonate hardness). Its fine for about 8hrs then falls again. I did a pretty large water change, 40% or so and my ph has stabilized but is still too low for my liking. Ive calibrated the probe twice so I know its accurate and its right on the money with my redsea kit. I think my water is just too dang soft! When I had RR water, my ph was alway around 8.4-6 using a redsea kit and I never had algae outbreaks. I have had cyano twice since Ive moved to Jarrell and now Im pretty sure I have dino. I need to get the hardness and ph up so I can fight off this dino.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted April 26, 2012 Author Share Posted April 26, 2012 Heres a couple days tracking temp and ph. Looks like there is deffo some following of ph to temp rise. Lags a little behind but pretty spot on. Water change was the spike in ph around 6:30pm yesterday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Monnat Jr Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Heres a couple days tracking temp and ph. Looks like there is deffo some following of ph to temp rise. Lags a little behind but pretty spot on. Water change was the spike in ph around 6:30pm yesterday. Are your lights on a schedule similar to natural daylight, or do you have it shifted and/or a reverse cycle lit sump? It seems to track temp real well at first then halfway through your graph it diverges (before the water change). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted April 26, 2012 Author Share Posted April 26, 2012 My fuge is not reverse lit. My lights are trimmed only to about 6 hours from 12-6. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victoly Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 I check both. My dkh is actually measured in meq2 but the test kit I have is vague. Ive scaled it with ph before and they follow dynamically so I know when my ph is low, my dkh is low. If I add buffer e.g. baking soda, my ph rises no problem(higher carbonate hardness). Its fine for about 8hrs then falls again. I did a pretty large water change, 40% or so and my ph has stabilized but is still too low for my liking. Ive calibrated the probe twice so I know its accurate and its right on the money with my redsea kit. I think my water is just too dang soft! When I had RR water, my ph was alway around 8.4-6 using a redsea kit and I never had algae outbreaks. I have had cyano twice since Ive moved to Jarrell and now Im pretty sure I have dino. I need to get the hardness and ph up so I can fight off this dino.... When you are using RODI, you remove anything from it that contributes to "hardness". Any resulting hardness in your tank will be from 1) salt 2)liverock 3)sand 4) supplemeints. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonDiver Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Well if it changes with temperature it *might* be a co2/O2 issue because temperature affects the solubility of gases in solution... But thats complete spitballing Im super new so yeah haha Sent from my HTC Glacier using Tapatalk 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AquaJohn Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 you do know that corals use alk to grow right they can use several DKH a day. Thats one of the reasons you need to add more to the tank its a good thing. there are calculators out there to show how much buffer to use to raise it and you may have to do that daily or get pumps to dose it for you one of the joys of a growing tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Monnat Jr Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Increasing alkalinity also increases pH. I bolus dose kalkwasser (from RODI) which replaces evaporation, bumps my pH into the 8.3's (yesterday accidentally to 8.40 briefly) and keeps my calcium and alkalinity high. Since I dose 5% vinegar with it to increase the lime saturation, it's also carbon dosing. I've been doing Dr. Holmes-Farley's cheap, simple method with homemade, DIY dosers (5L Tupperware ones). So far it's been working great. I don't have coral yet (just a lot of corlline algae) so my calcium sink is still small - I'm interested in seeing how my levels stay once I start adding stonies. As we're discussing in another thread, lots of ways to do things in this hobby/addiction. I'm not even close to being an expert, but I'm happy to offer what works for me (and warn others when I screw up). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Monnat Jr Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Forgot to add to my post above that right now I have fairly large pH swings, about 8.01 to 8.35 and back, as I drip-add kalkwasser 1/2 way through the DT night cycle. That's with a reverse-cycle lit sump with chaeto, ulva and LR. Last week when I was gone for 4 days and not feeding (nothing needed feeding, let them be the CUC they should be) or adding kalkwasser, the pH was a steady 8.16 when I got back. I was very worried that it would be really low, but every time I called the wife reported in that range (I need an Apex and a smart phone). I think that's where my tank is showing some immaturity. I don't think the bacteria is handling the ammonia from feeding with alacrity, and the ammonia buildup is driving down the pH. I haven't found any other source, yet. My EV-180 skimmer is working pretty well without being flooded (about 1/4-1/3 cup a day of skimmate). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted April 27, 2012 Author Share Posted April 27, 2012 Im picking up an ATO reservoir this weekend. I have an old calcium reactor that Ive converted to a kalkwasser reactor. Going to put it inline between ATO and float valve. Figure have the reactor pump stir up the solution 2 times a day or so. This should help. Also going to take all my corals out and put them in a QT. Going to black out the tank for a week or so. Hoping this will kill all these dino's. Was looking at getting an ozone setup, but they are a bit too expensive for my taste. My ph has seemed to stabilize after the waterchange but now the dino's are full swing. Also drilled/tapped the bottom of my skimmer cup and put a remote reservoir for skimmer output. Cranked it up and letting it wetskim like crazy. Figure between wet skimming + evap, my ATO should feed a lot of kalk to the sump and that will get the ph up high enough for a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Monnat Jr Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 My ph has seemed to stabilize after the waterchange but now the dino's are full swing. Also drilled/tapped the bottom of my skimmer cup and put a remote reservoir for skimmer output. Cranked it up and letting it wetskim like crazy. Figure between wet skimming + evap, my ATO should feed a lot of kalk to the sump and that will get the ph up high enough for a while. Dang. Good luck, and please let us know how it all works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+olaggie01 Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Look into a CO2 scrubber Derek. Might be worth the minimal investment. I think there was a thread on MAAST about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted April 27, 2012 Author Share Posted April 27, 2012 Dang, soda lime is expensive lol! $70 for 5g bucket of it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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