What's up everybody and welcome back to another video.
So it's been about a month since I switched from two part to a calcium
reactor and my established 187 gallon SPS dominant tank.
And I wanted to provide an update in terms of how that transition has gone.
And as you can see, I have a Reef Octopus.
Single chamber, nine inch.
CR220 calcium reactor with the Varios pump.
I also have the dual chamber reef octopus Calcium reactor on the new
system. So I will certainly be interested to see how the, um,
the pH is compare once that tank, the new tank has, uh,
a lot more corals in it. So I wanted to, I wanted to try out the single chamber.
Anyway, it was actually a pretty rough transition at first.
The media.
That I initially used inside this, a reactor is,
uh, this stuff,
the carob C arm course media I'd been using this for years and years and years
on my, um, 225 gallon tank that I had back in Connecticut,
very successfully loved the media. I think it was crushed coral, but.
Apparently they changed the formula.
A number of years ago. And when I found is that the, uh,
the pH set point in terms of being able to actually melt and dissolve the media
is a lot lower than what I was hoping.
I actually had to crank it down that pH set point all the way down to
6.1 to get it to dissolve.
But while I was trying to figure out that, um, that pH set point,
my alkalinity dropped a lie. You know, it had been in the mid, I dunno,
8.5 range for a long time using the two part,
but it dropped all the way down to 6.8 to the low sevens
for a number of days while I was trying to figure this thing out in terms of
what that optimal a melting point would be for the media.
So the only thing I lost and I'm really.
Really bummed out about it is my unique coral's original strawberry shortcake
colony. That was the only thing that perished in the tank.
So I guess that's a fortunate thing. I was lucky I didn't lose more,
but, you know, Hey, that's, that's the way it goes. You live and learn.
So I ended up replacing the carob C-arm course with the two little
fishies reborn media, and that stuff is great.
The melting point that I've been using on that is 6.5.
And so just,
just for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about in terms of the
melting point, I have this pH probe
in the calcium reactor and that pH probe is set right now to 6.5.
So when the pH gets below 6.5,
the carbon dioxide shuts off and, you know,
that's a big part in terms of how I'm trying to hit my targets alkalinity.
And right now this target, uh,
the alkalinity in this tank has been pretty rock solid at 8.5,
which is where I like to keep it.
So one of my initial big concerns.
When I, um,
was contemplating switching out from two-part to a calcium reactor in,
and the tank was consuming a ton,
a ton of two-part up to 300 MLS per day of each,
um, part.
So, you know, I was.
Concerned that my pH would drop a lot when I added in a
calcium reactive, because I'm injecting a lot of the, uh, the carbon dioxide.
So before I made the switch,
my pH was in the 8.1 to 8.4 range with two-part.
And, you know, I think also a big part of why my pH was elevated. You know,
two part it's,
it's going to be more elevated because you're not injecting the CO2.
I did add in an air exchange unit back in the winter time.
And I think that helped a lot. Nonetheless,
I was still concerned about making the switch from two-part to a calcium
reactor.
So one thing that I did.
To help offset that is I ran the, uh,
the FL line from the calcium reactor,
which is going through this Camorra peristaltic pump.
And I made sure that that line was
close to where, and it's very hard to see right here,
close to the intake and where the skimmer pump is.
So it's right now dripping straight down into the sump where the
skimmer pump is. So the, uh,
the theory there is that you want to have a, um,
a place where you can D gas. The carbon dioxide is coming out of the, uh,
the Kasmin reactor through the, the effluent line and Hey,
what better de gastro to have than the, um, the skimmer,
cause there's a lot of air exchange going on inside that chamber.
Now, another change that I made.
Is using Coq Wasser, and I want to thank my buddy,
Chris McClain at ACI aquaculture. He,
he gave me this idea and so far it's been working great.
And what I have here is a, a 30 gallon drum.
I'll take the lid off here
and inside this drum is Wasser,
and you can kind of see at the bottom,
I don't know if you could see the sediment or the slurry of the cough Wasser,
but it's down there at the bottom. And here's the interesting thing.
And I didn't realize this is something that you can do with Coq Waltzer.
I always thought that it needed to be stirred
to, um, make sure that the solution is fully saturated. But according to Chris,
you do not need to do that. The sludge or that sediment,
as long as you have the sludge of the sediment,
that solution is super saturated. So I do not do any mixing.
I've been not doing any mixing whenever the, um,
rod water drops off on this, getting down to the low point,
I just top it off.
So that's really kind of like the only mixing that's going on is when that rod
water is getting low. Nonetheless,
what I'm doing here is I'm using my GHL
dosing pump.
I've got two dosing heads that are actually pulling from this mixing bang.
And I, I also have my, uh, the 225 gallon tank.
I've got two dosing heads that are also pulling
from, um, the tubing and that's strung along the top of the door,
around the side here from this drum as well.
So this drum is serving two different systems,
not only the 107 gallon tank, but the new 225 gallon tank.
Anyway, I am pulling the, um,
and dosing from this container with the two peristaltic,
um, dosing heads right here. And I,
I wanted to use two different heads because I didn't want to overwork,
you know, one of the, uh, each of the, uh, the heads in this dosing pump.
So each head is, is pulling.
1800 MLS and dosing to the sump per day.
So in total I'm dosing 3,600 MLS per day
on this system. And listen,
you can't argue with the results right now because all the things that I've been
doing in terms of having the effluent line drip right
near the skimmer pump intake, plus dosing, the Wasser,
my pH,
when I was using the two-part has jumped from 8.1 to
8.4 as a high to now. Um,
actually it was 8.0 to 8.4.
And so now the pH with the Kasmin reactor online is 8.1
to 8.5, which is great.
So it actually has gone up 0.1 pH point,
which is pretty decent amount in terms of the swing outward.
So I'm really, really extremely happy. Not only did it not go down,
but it actually went up a tick.
One other point about this setup I have for Wasser.
I'm not saying that reactors are a unnecessary,
I've used reactors in the past with great success there. Um,
got a very small footprint. So if you don't have the space for a big drum line,
this, you know, obviously you want to have a, um,
a reactor where you could fit it in inside your cabinet or right next to your
tank. Well, for me,
I'm trying to dose Coq Wasser to about 500 gallons of, uh,
you know, system water. So I really needed a solution that could,
can handle that vibe. Now,
a couple of more points in terms of what I did make this transition between
two part, two accounts from reactor.
I measured alkalinity a lot often to try to get a good
benchmark in terms of how things were changing. When I made the switch.
I also did not play around a lot.
With the effluent flow rate. You know, it's now at about, uh,
zap actually at 50 MLS per minute.
So I didn't really monkey around with that too much. The bubble count
got going on.
Here is, uh, I don't know, 70 to 80.
Bubbles permitted. So really it was.
The pH set point that I was tinkering.
With the try to lock in the, uh,
desired alkalinity for the tank. You do,
you definitely have to be careful to take things slow,
measure a lot and just be careful. And when my ankle,
and he did get down to the 6.8 to low seven range,
I did dose the alkalinity from the two-part to raise it up because the Kasmin
reactor is not going to be the most effective tool to raise up the
alkalinity a lot. So I,
I definitely course corrected and did some more additional dosing
to try to up the alkalinity. And it certainly worked.
The calcium was pretty much.
In line in like the four 20 to four 30 range.
So I didn't have to make any adjustments.
There. Well, that will do it for this video. If you liked it,
please give it a thumbs up and hit that subscribe button.
If you haven't done so already,
I will put links to Marine Depot and reef bum in the video description below.
See you next time.