Stop your corals bleaching for less than $50.
I love SPS. I tried to resist it, but I failed. Too many great looking corals that grow in too many interesting shapes and styles. So earlier this summer, I started buying some SPS frags to start my own farm.
And all summer long, I’ve been watching frag after frag bleach out and die. Great….
Coincidently, I’ve also been battling a low pH issue all summer. My pH ranged from 7.75 @ night to 8.05 during the day.
For the first two months of having low pH, my tank was doing great and my coral growth was stunning – up to 1cm a week for SPS corals. Then one day my SPS started bleaching rapidly for no apparent reason – no sign of pests, no new corals/fish introduced to the tank that might have brought something in with them and my Alk levels were constant @ 9.
After trying to dip my corals to see if the issue was bacterial, the only thing left that was out of whack in my tank was my pH levels. I tried adding pH buffer to the tank, which would temporarily raise my pH, but by the next day, my pH was back to 7.8.
At this point, I found a stumbled across a new product called “The CO2 scrubber” by MCU Research. The theory behind the scrubber is easy: houses that don’t get a lot of fresh air (that’s me – central texas, A/C on all summer which recycles air from inside the home), build up an excess of CO2, which in turns gets pulled into your skimmer, mixed into your tank water, which then lowers tank pH, etc.
So I tested out their theory. About this time in central Texas, the oven turned off (aka, the summer heat broke) so I could open my windows at night and during the day. Two hours after opening up my house, my ph rose to 8.2.
And…I’m sold.
3 days later, my CO2 scrubber arrived and my ph once again rose and has stayed steady ever since. (see graph below).
So for about $50 including shipping, you can fix one potential issue in your reef keeping system.
Links for the kit I put together:
– Bulk Reef Supply Canister $12
– 1/4″ MPT to 3/8″ Barb – available at your local hardware store ($2 max)
– CO2 scrubber replacement cartridge $25
Graph of effects of adding CO2 scrubber:
The graph below is over a 24 period – 7a to 7a.
The links posted on this page are broken. Is there a way to access those pages so I can look into getting one?
Lucas…I tried the CO2 scrubber but now I don’t recommend it as it cost a fortune in media. I was going to have to spend $50/month just to keep fresh media in it. A better solution is to run the air intake line from your skimmer outside.
Hey Mark, I’ve thought about the tube to the outside, my biggest worry is some airborne contanimant getting into the tank from the outside (pesticide, etc)…how do people do this without worry?
Chris…that is always a worry. Where I live they don’t spray pesticides for bugs (other then when I call the exterminator) so I don’t worry much. My lawn man drives right by the inlet tube and the exhaust from the mower never affects my tank
hey chris, just a thought but if you’re worried about contaminants getting in through your skimmer you could take a replacement cartridge for a gas mask and some pvc make a diy air filter for your inlet tube. since a lot of them use a fine powdered carbon it absorbs a lot of junk from the air, and will theoretically keep it out of your tank.
I also tried this and was going through a ton of media. I fixed that by opening up the other port on my skimmer to the normal room air (my skimmer has a silencer with two inlets, one is normally closed). So what this did was mix high oxygen air with regular air and essentially balanced my pH well, but only uses a little bit of media. I even have experimented with a valve on the scrubber side to test how low that flow can go with still providing the benefit.