How to get fresh air in to tank water?

D

DFW

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Once again I am attempting to sort this out. After having added lots of unbaked baking soda over the last 1 1/2 years in an attempt to raise the pH, I find that now, after having stopped doing that 3 months ago, and having started to monitor the dKH, and allowing it to go down to 10.5, and then starting to drip lime wtaer, rather than the Seachem powdered calcium and baking soda, the dKH goes up, but the pH never goes past 7.8. It may seem that I am obsessing with this pH thing, but I am wanting to know why I am not getting the pH up with lime water that everyone says you will get. Does the dKH need to be lower than 10.5 before I start dripping lime water? I have the small air tube that runs to my skimmer running outside my home to a carbon filter hoping that some fresh air will get in my tank water- no improvement. Would it possibly be better to put an air pump outside my home to an air stone in my sump. Would that get more CO2 out of the water, and help to raise the pH? Any help is appreciated!

David
 
Hello David,

How do the tank inhabitants look?

The reason I ask is I too once worried about pH. I monitored, dosed, tested, read, studied and posted. All the while my alk/dKH, calc and mag were in the good range and all of my corals and fish were fat and happy. So guess what, I decided not to worry about pH. Unless you are having mass swings, say from 7.8 to to 8.8 or your corals look bad. I would just concentrate on keeping the dKH, calc and mag in the good range and forget about the pH. Just my two cents. It drove me nuts for about 6 months, now I check now and again but as long as the other parms are in balance and the corals look good I do not worry.

With that said, I wonder if you have immersed yourself in the Randy Holmes-Farley articles. Tons of reading but Tons of Good info.

Here is link to several of his articles.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/may2002/chem.htm
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/feb2002/chemistry.htm
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/mar2002/chem.htm
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/june2002/chem.htm


There are ton more on the site just do a search for Randy Holmes-Farley

Again, this is just one reefers opinon, I am sure others will chime in.

Stanley T''' - SALT
 
Thanks for your reply!

Fish and coral look alright to me. They are not growing much, but there have been other issues affecting my tanks that I am straightening out. I want to get the tanks to where they should be before I add other corals. I have read the articles by Holmes-Farley, and the part where he talks about sea water being in equilibrium with the air is what I am wanting to achieve. Surely someone here on the forums has imported fresh air into their systems without opening the windows of their homes. That is what I would like to learn about! Thank you again!

David
 
I will be the first to admit that I am not an expert; I am just talking from what I have read and experienced. With that said…..

Yes people have tried, me included. Here is what I found. You must understand that just like we are trying to recreate an entire ocean in a small glass box the ability to import enough high oxygen/low carbon dioxide air to displace the low oxygen/high carbon dioxide air in your home is not as easy as an air pump outdoors running an air stone in the sump or even pumping the fresh air into the air intake of the skimmer (both of which I tried). It is my understanding that it is not the air bubble going through the water column that helps, what really causes the gas exchange is movement of the surface of the water caused by the bubble breaking on the surface or breaking the meniscus so the carbon dioxide can escape and the oxygen can be absorbed. So to me that means you would have to surround your tank with the good outside air so it could be exchanged at the whole surface.

I guess if you had a separate fish room behind the main tank where the sump was located and constantly changed the air with the outside it might work but the room would need to be well sealed from the main house and have its own HVAC system.

Are you sure that your low pH is it caused by low dissolved oxygen in the water? Did you take a sample of the tank water, measure the pH and then run and air stone for an hour and test again and get a much higher reading? If so then I guess getting the air exchanged would help. When are you taking you pH readings? They will typically be lower in the AM. How are you measuring the pH, test kits or meters? I see you are running a magrove sump but you running a refugium with macor algae with reverse lighting?

If you have already answered all these questions before then just ignore and maybe someone else can come up with an idea.
 
I did the air stone experiment awhile back and got 8.3 outside after 15 minutes of bubbling, but no increase from 7.8 inside. I have even run a "duct" from a window air conditioner that I cut a vent to outdoors in, to the hood of my display. No improvement. The entire surface of the water is constantly rippling. All I need is one idea and I will be there!

No Macro, but I am in the initial stages of an algae scrubber. I tried the macro before.

Thanks for your reply!

David
 
After having added lots of unbaked baking soda over the last 1 1/2 years said:
You need baked baking soda in order to raise PH and alk, using unbaked will raise alk but can actually decrease PH temporarily if you use a lot due to the CO2. Also, what skimmer are you running?

Cheers,
Click to expand...
 
Hi Ron!
Thanks for your help, again!
I learned about he baked baking soda a couple months ago. The books by experts that I read failed to include the baking part. I used LOTS of baking soda in the 1 1/2 years prior to finding this out! I have a Sealife Systems skimmer that came with this second hand setup I bought almost 2 years ago. It had a Rio 2100 hooked up to it until the impeller went bad. Now I have a Mag 5 hooked to it. It looks to be making more bubbles now. I ran an airline outside to a carbon filter so as to draw fresh air to the skimmer as well. Another failed experiment?
 
I would upgrade that skimmer honestly. The super reef octopus skimmers with the bubble blaster pump's are priced right and kick butt.

Cheers,
 
Any particular model recommended for my setup? The details are below my posts. Thank you!

David
 
@DFW wrote:
Any particular model recommended for my setup? The details are below my posts. Thank you! David said:
There are a few members running these and will have a better idea of how to size these for your tank. I alway's size up one level over what I need for skimmers,so I have lot's of leaway in case I want to add that one more fish. [smilie=lol.gif]

Cheers,
Click to expand...
 
Your tank size a xp1000 would be good it's suppose to be good for up to 120 gallon tank with I think a light load. The bubble blaster is a great pump and efficient with even a needle wheel.
 
Thanks for your reply!

Has anyone ever tried putting a larger air line on their skimmer than it came with? It seems to me that you could increase the air intake significantly. What am I missing? That skimmer is round about several hundred dollars, I think. Thanks again!

David
 
If the air feed line is the same size as the intake on the venturi you can't increase the air intake by just putting a bigger line on it.
 
Thank you!

That's also what the manufacturer's rep said. He said putting a larger pump on there would "possibly" help. I did that already.

Thanks!

David
 
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