- Today on BRS tv Reef FAQs
we answer what are the easiest ways
to raise the pH in a saltwater reef tank?
(upbeat music)
Hi, I'm Ryan, your host at BRS tv Reef FAQs.
Today, we're getting straight to it
with the top five ways to get your tanks pH in order,
meaning get as close to stable 8.3 as possible.
First off, if your tank is anywhere between 7.8 and 8.3,
pH will not be the reason you succeed or fail,
so don't get too wrapped up in perfection.
They're just coral growth and metabolic health benefits
associated with being closer to 8.3
and why reefers shoot for it.
Before we start on the five, it should be shared
that a vast, vast majority of low pH issues
are related to one of two things,
either low alkalinity in the tank
or high carbon dioxide in the air
surrounding the tank itself.
By definition, pH is a scale of acidity
and ranks from zero to 14.
The reason that alkalinity and CO2 or carbon dioxide
are the biggest factors in a reef tank's pH
is again by definition,
alkalinity refers to the capability of the water
to neutralize acid, and the levels of carbon dioxide
in the air has a direct causation to the amount
of formation of carbonic acid there is in the tank,
so the better the tank can neutralize acid with alkalinity
and the lower the carbon dioxide
in the air surrounding the tank,
the higher the pH we can achieve in it.
Okay, starting with the number five method
of elevating your pH,
maintain your tanks alkalinity properly.
For a whole myriad of reasons,
alkalinity's the number one parameter
to check and monitor on a reef tank,
more important than calcium, magnesium, pH,
and arguably even in some ways salinity.
For most reefers we recommend a dKH to 8.5
because it's in a safe range
which allows for some dosing or testing mistakes.
Best option for raising alkalinity
is just some bulk sodium bicarbonate dissolved in water
and a reef calculator
which makes it easy to find the right dose.
The only thing I would completely avoid
is anything labeled pH buffer.
Some have components of alkalinity
which are not desirable in a reef tank and build up
or they're just sodium bicarbonate anyways
but a fish label makes them cost 10 times as much.
Ongoing maintenance of alkalinity
should be with a balanced approach
to both calcium and alkalinity because they're consumed
at the exact same rate in most tanks.
That can be your favorite two-part or even one-part,
like Tropic Marin's CARBOCALCIUM or All-for-Reef,
a calcium reactor or calc washer.
Those options cover 99% of how reefers
maintain calcium and alkalinity in their tanks.
On number four, which is closely related to that,
use a calcium and alkalinity solution
which is known for temporarily raising
the pH of the tank on a daily basis.
By far the most popular options are soda ash base two parts
and calc washer or calcium hydroxide
all of which reduce the available carbon dioxide,
and in turn carbonic acid, in the reef tank.
Number three, we move onto the solutions
for excess carbon dioxide in the room the tank is in.
This is directly the result of tightly sealed homes or rooms
with lots of pets and people
who breathe out carbon dioxide all day long.
The easiest option is just
open up a window for a few hours.
If your tank's pH goes up, this is your issue.
However it really isn't viable to keep the windows open
during the coldest or hottest months,
so implementation of equipment like air exchangers
are the best option for your home.
You could find a way to vent some room air out
and then replace it as well, but that can be more complex
than it sounds to do frequently and effectively
without significant heating and cooling costs
or negative pressure in the house
which can cause issues with your water heater or furnace.
This is where the number two best way comes in,
your protein skimmer has a tremendous amount of gas exchange
and very often over compensates
the gas exchange happening on the surface of the water,
so running a tube through the wall to pull fresh air
from the outdoors to your skimmer
will very often elevate the pH of the entire tank.
Just make sure to not draw from a heavily polluted area
or an area that gets lawn fertilizers
or pesticides sucked into the intake.
In fact a bit of carbon on the intake might help with that.
Alternatively, many reefers just scrub
all the CO2 off right at the skimmer these days.
There is media you can put
in something like a BRS reactor,
and the cartridge of media will scrub off all the CO2
prior to the skimmer which will raise the pH of the tank,
often dramatically so.
This is somewhat dependent on the tank and turnover
and how much air water your skimmer processes,
but most reefers will find this scrubber
almost works too well and needs to be mixed
at least with some ambiant air,
or the tank's pH might get too high.
If you're as reef nerdy as some of us here at BRS,
you can also use your tank's controller
to peg the tank's pH at a very specific number
by opening and closing an electronic solenoid
based on the tank's pH
something I think a lot of reefers
are gonna start doing in the near future.
They're even options to make it recirculating
and save on the media.
Okay, so what's the number one way
to raise the pH of your tank?
For me personally, that's a refugium,
a properly designed and lit refugium with algae,
like chaetomorpha, will rapidly consume
excess carbon dioxide in the tank's water
effectively reduce carbonic acid and raise the tank's pH.
So why do I say it's best?
Well, as long as some thought and effort
is put into the design, it will work for everyone.
It's natural, it doesn't require buying ongoing media,
performance is tunable by adjusting the light intensity
or photo period, and the byproduct of this approach
is the growing algae also reduces the nitrate
and phosphate in the tank which is one of the biggest issues
for newer to intermediate tanks.
We actually ran some prolonged experiments
on various refugium light sources on both nutrient control
as well as the ability to out compete algae in the display.
Certainly one of our more popular investigates
solving pH, undesirable nutrient, and algae issues
with one solution is certainly attractive,
absolutely worth checking out.
That's our top five pH solutions.
We'll see ya next Wednesday
with the next batch of BRS tv Reef FAQs.