Someone mentioned the effect that a large crowd in the room with your tank can have on pH. This is a screen shot of my pH graph (from my controller) from last night. There were about 20 people over for our usual Wed night meeting and as you can see it caused a big decrease in pH from my norm due to the high CO2 load. I got up this morning and opened the doors and pH is recovering quickly. One thing that added to the swing was that someone who will remain unnamed accidently unplugged my skimmer which I'm sure didn't help CO2 off gasing very much.
Just as a note here, David: I have been observing chronic low Ph in my tank(s) since I started this hobby. I had been contemplating what to do in hopes of making things better (stuff grows OK..not gangbusters and I don't have the colors I think I should). I read where kalk keeps ph a little higher than 2 part dosing so I went back to kalk - no difference in Ph swings that were significant. So then 2 weekends ago we had a house full on the 20th, and I saw my Ph drop to 7.7. I opened a window on the 21st and in a day it was higher that it usually is so I knew I had a CO2 thang going on (plus the put some tank water outside with aeration and measure Ph trick). Started running at 8.0-8.2. So then I put in a soda lime filter on the skimmer intake on the 26th: the next morning the Ph started at 8.1 - great, great progress and is holding much better numbers. Now, I can't say that I see a huge difference in my stuff (my gorgonian seems to be happier, and some of the softer corals *seem* happier...plate fungia has not been happy for a few weeks and still isn't). Maybe in the next week or two I'll be able to see something that knocks my socks off, but honestly at this point I really don't know if that would have any particular effects or not other than the Ph is now where it's *supposed* to be. Eh....
I've heard that you can hook up an airline tube t ok your skimmer and run it through the wall to outside air to fix this issue too.
I've heard that you can hook up an airline tube t ok your skimmer and run it through the wall to outside air to fix this issue too.
