Why Does My pH Have Such A Wide Swing?

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure about speeding the through flow of the reactor - You're Alk in the effluent is great. My understanding of the way to run a Ca reactor is to have maximum Alk in the effluent, a suitable rate of flow through that your tank gets sufficient Alk and Ca added, and enough gas to produce the desired Alk from the water going through.
If you increase flow then yes you will see a decrease in Alk. What I'd worry more about is that you're also dumping more CO2 into the tank. Less Alk means that the carbonic acid in the reactor is not being used up, so it's going back into your system and will cause a lower Ph.
I've heard from some of my Hard coral keeper friends that Korallith is biased towards Alk slightly - you could check the Ca in your effluent by letting some stand for a day, then diluting it to quarter strength with RO water and testing for Ca. Then use Andy's site to check that you're getting a balanced output.

I run Korallith media and coral gravel in my c1501 but still use Calcium chloride every now and then to pull things back to shape.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi XXX

Raise your PH to 6.7 inside the the first reactor. This will give you a PH of about 6.85 coming out of the first reactor into the 2nd reactor. Then you have a higher PH in the 2nd reactor meaning less CO2 to dissolve. Do this by raising the water flow (effluent) going through the reactor.

As for water entering the reactor from the top or bottom. I have Geo's reactor and the water enters at the bottom. If it entered at the top, I would have a difficult time rasing the water coming out from the bottom high enough to drip into my sump because of gravity. I also think there is more reaction time in the reactor when water enters from the bottom because it takes more pressure to rise upward. If the water entered from the top, it would go through to the bottom of the reactor by simple gravity, with no back pressure. This might be the reason most reactors are designed that way.



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Joe Stiene
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