Aptasia cure all! Now how do I fix the cure! (High PH)

F

Frogspawn

I've been dosing my 215g with kalk water for about 18 months now and have had great success at keeping the calcium and PH in optimum ranges. However, recently my PH rose to undesirable levels as I've since found out is common with limewater tanks. The PH was ranging in the 8.5x area and has gotten as high as 8.78! I use a PH probe for measurement.

The good news however is that during the course of this episode, all my aptasia has disappeared without a trace! I had been fighting it and it was winning until this PH problem and now they are gone. And I don't mean I still have a couple little ones left here and there, they are GONE!

While that's nice bonus, I'm still battling the PH issue. I've done my research at reefkeeping and have dosed soda water and vinegar with only very temporary success as it rebounds quickly. I've quit adding the kalk and refill with pure water only now. As I understand it I need to add carbon dioxide to the water. More aeration is an option too but it has quite a bit already.

A little advice from those in the know here would be appreciated. Water changes is of course something else I'm doing to help I hope. I change 50g at a time and just changed about one week ago.

Thanks for any suggestions here. I'm great at getting the PH up but I've never had to get it down before!

Thanks,

Eric
 
Hey Eric,

Look into CO2. Usually having a calcium reactor helps lower pH and Kalk helps raises pH. You must find a way to balance the two if you decide to go with CO2.
 
Yeah I've thought about that. I'm just really ignorant right now about that method and need to do some research. Also... $$$ heh

When running CO2 without kalk, which I've seen to be common, how is the PH brought up when it gets low? Or maybe I was seeing something else.

I plumbed in another tank to the same system yesterday which did add some aeration to the total volume and the PH has dropped to 8.54 this morning. This is much more acceptable but of course I'd still like to get it down a bit yet.
 
so you'd end up having to use calcium reactor along with dosing kalk to keep ph balanced. then you'd have to use a ph monitor to constantly monitor the ph. this is why you usually see super advanced aquarists with a ton of stuff hooked up to their tank :?
 
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