Biopellets and pH correlation??

[Blazinreef]

Do biopellets and pH have any correlation at all? I was doing some routine maintenance, and part of it was changing the pellet reactor. Normally at this time period the pH is on a steady rise. Well, today I took the reactor offline to change everything out, and the pH flattened out. I left the pellets offline for a few hours and the pH stayed constant and didn't move again all night?

Has anyone ever noticed this or have any ideas?

[Neogenesis]

I haven't read anything concerning PH, but I have some across some posts about fluctuations in ALK.

On a side note,  How do you like them so far?  I've been toying with the idea, but am trying a few other things before I take the plunge and start running them?  What problems have you encountered, what was the reason you made you decide to start using them?

[Blazinreef]

So looking back at my graphs and data, the last three days

my pH low had been
8.13
8.15
8.12

my pH high had been
8.45
8.42
8.43

I took the pellets offline at about 10pm.  Normally my pH high is at about midnight.  At about 10:30 my pH leveled off to 8.34 and didn't get any higher for the night.  It began to decline at about the same time it does every night.  The low now this morning is 8.03.  I left the pellets offline for the night, but everything else is the same.

So that is a full 0.1 difference on the high and low end, during 14 hours, and the only change was taking the pellets offline.

[Ashlar]

Do you have the output from the reactor feeding into your skimmer? That could have helped 'blow off' some CO2, which would raise your ph.

[SapperChris]

I have never heard of anyone having this PH problem from using Biopellets. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen though. Do you have your fuge on a reverse lighting cycle? If you run the light on the fuge at night when the other lights are out it will help the PH to stay stable and won’t drop so much at night. Just an idea if you can’t figure out what’s causing it to drop so low.

[Blazinreef]

The output went into a fuge, then back thru the sump.  My lights are all set to different times, so there is a light on over one of the tanks in the system at any given time.

[Ashlar]

Well, that kind of blows my theory.. assuming the macroalgae in your fuge are doing well, and the flow through there not too fast, I'd expect the algae to do a good job of scrubbing CO2.

[SapperChris]

I don't have any answers for you but if you ever figure it out let us know in case I ever run into this problem. Thanks and good luck