Salt = 1.025    Akl/KH = 8.5

mag = 1350    Cal   = 460

Anm, NO2, NO3 all 0

 

 

 

 

Is this normal?

Is lime like Cal when your tank starts to use it just plan on using it all the time?  I am would like to keep my ph more stable if I can. 

 

Thanks for your help.

 

 

 

 

Now that I think about it that is about when I started seeing changes in the ph. 

It is not the air conditioning itself that causes the pH drop, so don't worry.

 

It is the lack of new (fresh) air coming into the house, and the subsequent increase in carbon dioxide that gets trapped in the house due to all the windows and doors being closed (to keep the cool air inside). The higher CO2 value is causing the pH drop. Prior to a few days ago it was cool enough outside that you probably had the air off and a few windows open instead, right?

 

As far as your aquarium goes, if you run a skimmer, you can attach a length of airline tubing to the skimmers air intake line and then run it to a window or other source of outside air. That alone will mix in enough better - oxygenated air into your water to get the pH back to where it used to be.

 

In my case, I drilled a small hole in my floor and ran the extra tubing into my crawlspace and out to a foundation vent. My pH returned to 'normal' in about 4 hours, and hasn't moved since.

 

 

 

Thanks again for your help I was about to pull my hair out.  trying to think of a way to keep the ph up with lime. 

I now have the start of a plan.  I just need an idea of how large of a pipe I should run for fresh air.  I have some extra 1/4" tubing around the house that I could use.  I also have some 3/4 pvc that I could pipe through an outside wall.

BTW you can leave it installed like that year-round. Any outside air 'sucked in' during the winter months is not going to be so cold or such a high volume as to affect your water temperature.

 

 

Thanks again Bob!!!

Yes Kurt, you should worry. Low Alk levels are extremely hard on SPS. Chronic low Alk levels can also led to your sand bed breaking down or dissolving. Think of a Calcium reactor. Target PH inside the chamber is 6.0-6.2. This allows the media to be broken down and in turn add Ca and Alk to the display. Raise your Alk up to 8.0 asap.

When I did mine, I drilled a small hole into the outside air line (just be careful not to drill through to the other side of the tubing, you only want to drill a single hole) that was the same diameter as the output tubing from my ozone generator.

Then I just stuck the ozone tubing into the hole and used a little superglue to hold it in place.

 

 

This option use a plastic "tee" to  put everything together -

 

 

 

This one just drill a hole into the outside air tubing for the ozone air output and then slip the outside tubing right over the existing skimmer intake airline (this is how I did it) -

 

Just make sure your connections are fairly tight so no ozone escapes into the ambient room air (ozone is bad for you)

 

 

 

 

 

 - Take a small piece of window screen and a rubber band and cover the exposed end of the airline tubing that is outside... keeps dirt and bugs out of the airline.

 

 - As Mark pointed out earlier, the higher CO2 that builds up in your home is not good for people, either... we are lucky here in UT that even if it is super hot (90+ degrees) out during the day. it cools off quite a bit at night. Be sure to open a few windows before you go to bed (say around 10 PM) every couple of days to allow fresh air into your home. You can keep even the A/C on, since the outside air at 10 PM is probably the same temp (or even lower) than your inside temp - so you won't make your A/C work any harder than if the windows were kept closed.