PH Falling; ALK HIGH; and Cyano ?? Please Help

[ufans]

I have a 75gal FOWLR that has been setup for about 3months now. I had a short battle with Green Hair Algae, but I beat that. I have some diatoms but they are subsiding. But here are my problems.....

1) My ALK is at 16dKH ... Will it ever come down? Is it a concern?

2) My PH falls about .3-.4 daily. A high of 8.3 after two days of Kalkwasser dosing. If I stop dosing it falls all the way to 8.15 in only a couple of days. Do I really have to dose Kalkwasser daily? I thought that my high ALK level would prevent the quick change.

3) Cyano has been trying to get a foothold over 1/5 of my tank. Only on the substrate. I have been trying to remove it manually with some luck. I am skimming 24/7, weekly water changes, carbon, and just started Chemi-pure. Any other ideas? (Chemi-clean & ER are my last resort)

PLEASE HELP....

Here are my specs:
75gal AGA FOWLR w/ 30# Fiji LR + 3"LS + 2xMaxiJet 900s
20Lgal AGA sump w/ baffles (Mag7 Return)
20Hgal AGA refugium w/ Gracilaria tikvahiae
Berlin Classic PS powered by Mag 9
Yellow Tang (aka Big Bird)
2 Maroon Clowns
Yellow Watchman Goby
Sand Shifting Star
Hermit Crabs & Snails

Ammonia/Nitrite/Nitrate = 0ppm
Ca = 350ppm
ALK = 16dKH
SG = 1.025
PH = 8.1-8.3

 

[Anonymous]

You could drip the kalk at night. But it may raise the alk even more. I would get some PH buffer like the one sold by Seachem. It will maintain a PH of 8.3 without effecting the alk. For many a daily swing of 8.1-8.3 is normal due to the photosynthesis during the day.

To reduce cyano you can increase flow. If you have a DSB I would check it to see if there are enough critters. If not you have waste in the sandbed feeding the cyano and it needs to be removed.

 

[cdeakle]

a ph swing from 8.1 - 8.3 is perfectly ok and well within normal parameters.

For calcium you wanna aim for 400 or more. I would keep adding kalk untill you can get it up to around 400 and then maintain.

As for the cyano what I did to beat it was:

1) Increased circulation. I added 2 more MJ1200's and had an immediate improvement.

2) Upgraded to a better skimmer. I'm not familiar with your skimmer but ask for a review for it here on reefs.org to make sure it is up to snuff.

3) Reduced my feedings greatly as to not add extra nutrients and waste to the tank.

4) Siphoning out the cyano with water changes.

Hope this helps....

 

[elpescado]

If you use a pH meter that can print you out a graph you would notice a decrease in pH durring the dark hours and an increase durring daylight ours.
A pH of 8.1 for a low and 8.3 for a high is just fine.
With the calcium being so low and the dKH so high I want to say that you are using well water. If you use a calcium additive like calcium chloride (Kent turbo calcium), or a concentrated liquid calcium (may take a lot of it) you can bring up the calcium and drive the carbonates down to the 10 to 12 range. Kalkwasser will bring up both calcium and carbonates which will fight the increase of your calcium as the carbonates increase.
If the pH continues to go down into the 7 range, have the room where the tank and refugium are set up tested for CO2 levels. Homes with higher carbon dioxide levels will tend to drive the pH down in the aquarium.
Definately add more current. "Burn" off the CO2, and the higher the dissolved oxygen content of the water, the less "slime" will grow in the tank as waste is oxydized faster (ORP Baby!!!).

 

[Kevin1000]

I would just let the tank run - none of your parameters are too far out of line. Not sure why you are dripping Kalk but I sure don't see anything in your tank that would benefit from it.

 

[Anonymous]

I did not mean for you to remove the DSB. You'll need some critters to seed the DSB and eat the detrius.

Dripping kalk is good because it precipitates phosphates.

 

[ufans]

I drip Kalk to keep my PH above 8.1 which has been pretty difficult to do without continuously dripping Kalk. The side effect is that it doesn't allow the ALK to fall. I am trying to add Ca (calcium cloride) to help even things out, but haven't had much luck. I am going to do a 10% water change and see if that will help.

As for the Cyano.... the chemi-pure has done wonders. The cyano is finally disappearing and my sand shifting star has moved into the area to help with the detris. A GREAT sign. Only two dine-sized patches left and that should be gone very soon.

CHEMI-PURE is GREAT !!!

I also bought some chemi-clean as well, but didn't want to do that because it requires a significant water change after treatment. I believe the chemi-clean is a potassium permanante power that really causes the DO to be skimmed easily.

I am also going to add about 25lbs more live rock to help with stability.

I think I am going in the right direction....

 

[Kevin1000]

You should not have to add Kalk to maintain Ph in a Fowl tank- people add Kalk to their reef tanks to provide an inexpensive way to maintain calcium.

Not sure why you are overly concerned with a Ph of 8.15 - no way your fish have demonstrated any adverse impact.

 

[ufans]

Yeah.. my fish are fine, but I am about to start adding coral. I am going to start with star polyps or something else pretty easy. I just want to try to maintain good water parameters and my current problem areas are PH and Ca. Most of the recommendations I have received includes a PH between 8.2 and 8.4.

 

[Kevin1000]

I would recommend you leave your tank alone for a while - suispect you are trying to micro manange something that does not need any attention. Most Ph test kits are not all that accurate and I don't think you have a problem.

 

[ufans]

Micro managing....Yeah.. I am sure there is some truth to that. I just want to make sure I don't kill any new coral that I buy because nothing in this hobby is cheap.

I am using a Hanna PH/EC/TDS Digital monitor and it claims to be accurate to .01 ph and it measures TDS in ppt instead of ppm. Much better than that crappy Aquarium Pharm PH kit that couldn't tell the difference from 8.1 and 8.4

I mixed 19gal of fresh RO+NaCl last night so I am going to do a water change today and then wait a couple of days to see how it goes.

 

[kim]

I just want to say I agree with elpescado. Totally.

While your attention to pH is admirable, your problem is, as he says, almost certainly due to elevated CO2, either too much in the room (bad ventilation) or insufficient circulation in the tank. If you are concerned about pH (and it doesn't seem to be a problem) fix this.

Remember that your current method of adding kalkwasser to excess is just causing another chemical imbalance ! Is that the best way ? You can poison a tank with excess alkalinity/pH buffer. I can find threads describing how people have nuked systems trying to raise pH this way.

So also remember...the primary purpose of pH buffer/alkalinity (they are the same thing) is to stabilise pH against temporary shocks, not to raise it permanently. To buffer something is to stabilise it, not to raise it.

So in order to raise pH using these chemicals you will normally have to overdose. Since you seem very attentive to your tank, I suspect that you don't want to do this long term.

In short, best attack any problem at source. If you need, I (as can others) post a method for establishing whether it is a CO2 problem....but this post is long enough. Hope that the tone isn't offensive - I wanted to be very forthright because people can go round in circles on this one.



kim

 

[ufans]

I think you are correct.

I definitely have an imbalance in my water...probably C02 and organic acids. I have been trying to adjust the side effects which were causing my PH to fall but that isn't the problem....just a side effect.

I am going to do a large water change and increase the air circulation around the tank and hopefully that will help stabalize things.

The more I read I can see that overdosing on buffer is more dangerous than low PH.... and the contunually adding of chemicals are more expensive than salt so it seems that water changes are still the best way to maintain a stable environment. Chemicals can help get you to the initial stable environment but they aren't the best solution to restablize a tank once it is out of balance.

Thanks all for the great advice !!!!

 

[Anonymous]

If you are thet concerned about your PH I would either get Proper PH 8.2 or Seachems PH 8.3. They will stabilize and maintain your PH without effecting your Alk.

 

[ufans]

Here is the update......

I did a ~18gal water change.

I ran several tests on the new water before I put it into the tank. I used Oceanic salt with RO water.
PO4=.1ppm, CA=450ppm, SG=1.025, PH=8.2, ALK=4.7meq/l

After a couple of hours after the water change....
PO4=<.1ppm, CA=450, SG=1.025, PH=8.2, ALK=5.7meq/l

After two days...
Everything the same but CA dropped to 400ppm

So, everything looks great except for the high ALK. I have also noticed that the fish seem to be a bit more active but that might just be me.

The other things that I did was remove the hoods from the display so that it would have more breathing room to hopefully remove any CO2 problems in the water. I also realized that my lighting still wasn't on a full pattern after fighting with the algae last month so I returned it to a full 10-12 lighting cycle. The increased light, and removal of the hoods and everything else REALLY seemed to help stabalize the PH and I started to see the natural rise an fall in PH. Since I run a refugium on reverse lighting and my ALK is still very high it doesn't flux that much and stays between 8.18 and 8.3. I can definitely live with that.

With everything else and the chemi-clean that I used to nix the cyano my Berlin Classic skimmer at least tripled in efficiency. Now I am getting about 1/2 - 1 cup a day of skimmate.

I think I am on the home stretch. Thanks to all for the great advice. The only thing that I now have to battle is the continual adding of top-off water because with the hoods off I am getting a lot more evaporation. It is a good thing.... just a hassle. I am going to leave the aquarium as is unless the CA continues to drop. It tested at 400ppm this morning and if it goes lower then I am just going to add the 1-part CA mix from B-ionic. I figure I am going to loose CA as long as my ALK is high.