TheClark

Sure tough to avoid pests, glad you were able to wipe em out!

Missed your intro thread, welcome back to the hobby neighbor! Then I saw the majonos, was poised at the keyboard to herald a warning. Then with relief I saw that you were in good hands. Nice new frags! Glad things are doing well.

I did not, that sounds interesting!

Another option: I just pull the metal probe off with pliers, its rubber underneath! GLWS

And all the reagent! At 24 test a day, they go fast!

Proud to be... old Seti@home was the pioneer in distributed computing, if only I would have taken up mining bitcoin early on...

I do find this all super interesting, and the discussion too. When new data emerges we tend to learn. Seti@home, yes! I can run it on my 486DX2!

CO2 monitors can be had pretty reasonably now, thanks to the indoor growing industry I suppose!

Good idea, here it is:

That's a tough topic for me. I too struggled. Ran a scrubber for a while, but it went through media so fast. Finally I moved the skimmer intakes to the outside window. That helped allot, and I just tend to keep windows open all year long now. Is your alk ok? Did you check out RHF article on this? http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rhf/#:~:text=In my opinion%2C the pH,end of this pH range.

Added PH! Thanks @EMeyer It's incredible to think in the vast ocean that alk drops 7% in the day time.

Oh, this is great, very interested! Let me add PH to that chart in case it helps the discussion!

Isn't that crazy how coral sucks down the alk right after lights out? I felt surprised by that data, but never tested enough to even wonder!

Nice job all, and all who entered and thanks to @SuncrestReef and @Higher Thinking and the rest of board for making this happen. Truly love seeing all your reef photos!

Hmmm, that seems like enough nutrients to me. Chaeto is such a mystery sometimes... This video solved my problems when I couldn't get it to grow: However, I use black box leds, two right next to each other and absolutely douse the chaeto with light. Way more than I would ever put on coral, both channels 100% over what amounts to about a 20 gallon area of the sump. The par must be incredible in there. This was key for me to get it to grow, ALLOT more light than the DT. Like I said, it was nothing to throw away an entire kitchen garbage bag of it at a time. I was the chaeto king, had chaeto for all. Then the nutrients died down, and now it is an empty sump chamber with allot of light, probably should turn it down LOL Black box leds for me, because chaeto in my book does not deserve a more expensive light than the DT Looks like you have a powerful light. Crank that grow light up as high as it will go and see if it makes a difference. Others may have different experiences, just my share...

Bumping it up!

Thoughts: - Alk stability is known to be very important in reef keeping. - We run the CR at the same flow and PH 24x7, but the alk demand is not steady during that same period. - Can the solenoid be shut off for certain periods and / or the PH be lowered certain periods to balance it out? The ultimate stable alk? Below are the results of testing every hour for 24 hours. This also confirms many months of testing every six hours. The higher resolution is nice though and gives better data for conclusions or actions. - Alk peaks at 11:10 AM both days. - Alk lows are at about 6:00 PM both days Twice the CR solenoid was shut off because alk was getting too high, between 11 am and 1 pm. My ultimate goal is to flatten out the peaks and valleys, get alk as stable as possible. Going forward, shutting off the solenoid around 2-3 am may make sense along with running a slightly lower reactor PH when during the rest of the day.

Just thought I would post the results of this ad hoc experiment. This is the conclusion of the 24+ hour test with alk tests ran every hour: - Alk peaks at 11:10 AM both days. - Alk lows are at about 6:00 PM both days Twice the CR solenoid was shut off because alk was getting too high, between 11 am and 1 pm. My ultimate goal is to flatten out the peaks and valleys, get alk as stable as possible. Going forward, shutting off the solenoid around 2-3 am may make sense along with running a slightly lower reactor PH when during the rest of the day.

I was throwing it out by the literal garbage bag full last year, then it all died off too. I think it used up my nutrients. Ironically my nutrients are going back up, and I have no chaeto now. Your DT looks spotless, it might be just too clean. These are guesses of course, for what its worth.

Hey Jim, I am running a 12-9 schedule. The Ocean Revives drift time though, so its off a bit.

Its kinda fun to share/discuss all this. The huge learning from all the trident users is probably this. All things remaining the same, Alk varies daily. To compare apples to apples, test at the same time every day. For example here the profile of mine over the last several months. It is so consistent, which makes sense I suppose... 12:00 AM - Alk is at the absolute lowest 6:00 AM - A huge run up from 12:00 AM 12:00 - A slight dip 6:00 PM - A slight increase Repeat - 12:00 AM is the big drop The lowest spot in this chart is midnight: The highest spot is 6 pm The huge runup is midnight to 6 am every day. This is repeatable for months on end. The green line is the CR solenoid shutting off because ALK is high (not the reactor PH). That last little safeguard keeps the alk from running up too fast if the flow or effluent PH is off.

Yes, I did figure out what caused it. I was 'flattening the alk curve' Every morning, the Alk was spiking up tremendously. So, I set the CR solenoid to turn off for a few hours late at night. Turns out I over corrected. I was able to quickly recover thanks to the alert. This level of alk testing was just a dream a while back, exciting to think of things people will learn. Although this sound contradictory, it looks like coral uses the most alk just before and just after the lights are off. Then they stop using it altogether later in the night, which causes the spike. Test is in progress.... Will run hourly tests until tomorrow night.

Here is the CR PH and the Effluent PH

I thought the same thing... at first. Think about this though... It is so repeatable, every hour it alternates either + or -, consistently. So I am not so convinced it is a random +- event just yet...

Love it! If you are looking for feedback, had one thought. If possible make room for two skimmers, its nice to have on a larger system. Get a bit of redundancy and you can run 'normal' sized skimmers.