Jestersix

Calcium reactors, carbon dioxide and night time ph swings

Hi All,
Been doing a little planning on our new sump and the more I read, the more confused I get. It seems a lot of people alternate the lighting of the tank and sump to stop carbon dioxide build up and to stop the ph on their tank from dropping. Then they run a calcium reactor and add carbon dioxide to drop the ph and decompose the aragonite sand. Couldn't the same thing be accomplished by letting the tank and sump have a good dark period, which would raise co2 and lower ph, shutting the skimmer of to limit oxygen into the water and running the water through a reactor with aragonite and no additional carbon dioxide?
 
Huh? I think you are confusing separate things. People are not aiming to light the sump, specifically they are lighting a refugium. And many recommend to offset light cycles between main DT and refugium to reduce pH swings. Whatever you're reading about calcium reactor on top of that is not directly relevant. You do not need to run a calcium reactor, and they are trying to drop the pH to decompose old coral skeletons, not sand. This dropping of pH to levels of melting the corals happens within the reactor. It can drop the pH of the main system as the effluent is acidic, but it should not be dropping the main system pH into the melting range which is below 7. That would not be good.


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Huh? I think you are confusing separate things. People are not aiming to light the sump, specifically they are lighting a refugium. And many recommend to offset light cycles between main DT and refugium to reduce pH swings. Whatever you're reading about calcium reactor on top of that is not directly relevant. You do not need to run a calcium reactor, and they are trying to drop the pH to decompose old coral skeletons, not sand. This dropping of pH to levels of melting the corals happens within the reactor. It can drop the pH of the main system as the effluent is acidic, but it should not be dropping the main system pH into the melting range which is below 7. That would not be good.


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I told ya I was getting confused - my brain hurts.
 
Not to mention the pH in a calcium reactor that dissolves the media is rather low, if your tank's pH got that low then the water doesn't care what it's dissolving it would just dissolve, in this case any hard corals whether living or dead in your system.
 
If you drop the ph enough to melt the aragonite in the reactor, it will also melt the coral skeletons in your tank. But I think all your livestock will be dead by then anyway.

CaRx feed rates are very very slow. It's a drip rate. Not really a flow rate.


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