Mastering Reef Tank Chemistry: pH, CO2 Scrubbing, and Trace Element Dosing Explained! 

Done! Got a 3d printed recirculating lid from fish of hex for my skimmer

@@TheBioReef Great! Looking forward to hearing about your results.

thanks Eddy!

Thanks

Yeah we are on the same boat then Cindy. I also got a 6 back of tests. I did the adjustment in 1 week and sent another test right away. Some of the trace elements were recommended as one time corrections on the fauna Marin lab page but as daily dosing on the moonshiner’s guide. Also the target for some of the macro and trace elements differ between the two programs. I am going with the moonshiner targets and recommendations but with the FM reagents… I’ll keep you updated !

Thanks Garry! Looking forward to trying this out. Fauna Marin do make some statements about the high accuracy of their tests. I have not seen any explicit comparisons of accuracy of their tests vs ATI. I will trust them for now until shown otherwise

:) mission accomplished - click bait works :)

@@TheBioReef 😂😂😂

Thanks man!

Nice, thanks

Thanks will check them out online

i wanted to try the seperate elements like the moonshiner method! its more work for sure, but i do love some of the moonshiner tanks and i am curious if i can recreate their success

I have a hunch the common denominator amongst moonshiner tanks isn’t individually dosed trace elements, it’s reefers who are extremely focused and methodical on their tanks. Just a theory.

@@TrevorHiller hahaha - great hypothesis Trevor... in other words... Nerds have the magic sps touch

I agree that stability is important but the actual ph values also matter. So stability at 7.8 will produce less growth than stability at 8.2 for example

nice! yeah really curious to see the one month picture comparison with my coral...

How much volume of water is that and did it raise the water level in your sump. That’s my current issue. I can’t dose enough kalk to keep a check on ph just at night without having to set off my osmolator high level alarm in my sump

@@TheBioReef Do you have an ATO? 150g I add about 1g of water/night, have to maintain mag. looking at my notes it took about 2 months. you can add a fan for a few weeks to increase evaporation. once it's locked in, I have to decrease the amount of kalk ratio in the dose water or my ph gets too high 8.7+, I made couple of vids on it somewhere cant find them🙃

@@spicyreef will try to find these vids!!! thanks

I tried that but ran into a couple of minor issues. 1) in the summer, evaporation rate is considerably low because of the excess humidity and that means that I can’t get enough kalk at night to make a sustained impact on ph without having to add more volume thst can evaporate in a single day. 2) inconsistent ca and dkh additions only at night mess up my alk and ca stability 3) effect on ph min is not as predictable as the currently method with controlling the scrubber via skimmer

​@@TheBioReef Chris Meckley from ACI Aquaculture said pH is more important than alkalinity so you should put more emphasis on lessening the pH swing instead. He suggests aiming for a pH of 8.3. I suggest you dose as much kalk as possible at night and dose your 2-part during the day when the alkalinity is low. That way you can lessen both alkalinity and pH swings. CO2 scrubber works but kalk is cheaper and less of a hassle. Do consider this if you find changing your CO2 scrubber a pain in the rear end. Also, Chris Meckley is against kalk stirrer as kalk contain impurities(as with other kh and calcium supplements). He suggests mixing a kalk solution at max saturation in a barrel and dose only the clear liquid. You could install an air exchange unit. Reefbum said it made a huge different on the pH.

@@StubbyAcro thanks man! Right now - I am very happy with the media consumption of the scrubber - it’s only used a couple of hours a day; I am only using it to guard against going lower than 8..15 at night. I think an average of 8.3 might be totally possible as the corals grow… from my experience with the Reefer250, a high average ph was so much easier to obtain when you have a large biomass of corals taking up co2 during the day. Also considered air exhange but it’s big initial investment in $ and does not in interfere help me fine tune min ph like the scrubber does now. Thanks for your tips

@@StubbyAcroare there any ways to dose Kalk by hand or is that frowned upon?

@@shane6450 Just buy a doser. The jebao one is cheap.

Thanks man… only 5 really need to be manually dosed on a regular basis… all the other are just for gradual corrections every month or so

5 ppm and 0.05 ppm

Thanks Mike

@@TheBioReef That aside, the tank is really recovering quite nicely

@@opethmike thanks Mike

Nope been using reef crystal for about 3 years now

@@TheBioReef why the switch to RC? Basically in the UK salt prices have gone insane and Instant ocean is about half the price of tropic Marin, so I want to make the switch. Your IO vs TMPR video was so helpful in showing there wasn't much difference.

@@so_so_reef why ? Don’t really have a strong justification for switching other than a lot of viewer comments about giving RC a try because of more trace elements

@@TheBioReef fair enough! I don't think reef crystals would work for me because the high dKH would make long term storage a potential issue.

@@TheBioReef cool! I was trying to decide whether to go for IO or RC, so just wondered. You might've mentioned this in a video (I'm a new subscriber and working my way through your videos) but what do you run your alk at? I'd assume fairly high if using RC.