Ohio Reef
Reef Discussion => Water Chemistry => Topic started by: ohioreef on May 27, 2021, 12:43:44
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Does anyone have any experience running a CO2 scrubber on their skimmer to raise pH?
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Does anyone have any experience running a CO2 scrubber on their skimmer to raise pH?
I’ve been running one intermittently for a couple years. Two canisters tubed to my skimmer intake. I only run my skimmer 10hrs a day though
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Does it seem to help with keeping your pH up?
My pH has been running 7.3-7.5. Everything looks fine, but I’d like to get it up.
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Absolutely it does. But you must be careful. Our reefs need CO2. If you gas off all the CO2 in your system, via scrubber,your pH goes very high, as well as your consumption of nutrients. You run the risk of starving out your reef. That’s why I only run it 8-10 hrs a day.
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Thanks for the info and real world experience. Sounds like one would help me.
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I know this is an old thread but I was wondering what co2 scrubber you are using.
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Its just the standard BRS type canisters. I run 2 inline. The first canister will completely exhaust. Then I let the 2nd canister get half way exhausted. At that point I will move the half way exhausted canister to the 1st position and fill up the exhausted canister with new media and place it in the 2nd position. That way you are always at full strength. If you only run one canister it will be more powerful at the beginning and barely working toward the end of the media. This causes you to have to constantly adjust your dosing because of the swings in pH/consumption. The 2 canister method eliminates that
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Its just the standard BRS type canisters. I run 2 inline. The first canister will completely exhaust. Then I let the 2nd canister get half way exhausted. At that point I will move the half way exhausted canister to the 1st position and fill up the exhausted canister with new media and place it in the 2nd position. That way you are always at full strength. If you only run one canister it will be more powerful at the beginning and barely working toward the end of the media. This causes you to have to constantly adjust your dosing because of the swings in pH/consumption. The 2 canister method eliminates that
I'm having an issue with my ph probe. I have another on the way so I'm not trusting it at the moment. Hopefully I will have the new probe in a couple days. I ran my skimmer line outside and that did seem to give me a boost. Is there anything else you are doing to boost ph?
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You won?t need anything else if you run a double canister. Even with the house all closed up and me working from home Im getting my ph up to 8.52 during peak lighting. Unless of course, your skimmer is drastically under sized.
In the spring and fall I will disconnect the scrubber and crack a window in the reef room. Fresh air will fix your ph too. But in the dead of summer, cracking the window or running your air tube outside does little to nothing because of the elevated CO2 in the heat of summer. In the dead of winter if you crack a window you?re overusing your heaters which could fail and drop your temp too quickly. So in my opinion, it?s best to run the scrubber in both those extremes.
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Thanks for the info. I think I will get a couple coming. Do you recirculate the air from the skimmer? I've read it helps lower media consumption.
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I do not recirculate. The media lasts a decent amount of time for me because there?s only 3 of us in the house. I will say, however, it?s not cheap to run it. In the grand scheme of things, I feel like the increased pH from using it helps with growth/propagation on the Stoney?s.