Help me dial in my korallin Ca reactor

[sabodish]

aight guys..ive had this reactor (korallin 3002) for abou 4 days now and need some guidance dialing it in...

the last set of readings are as follows:

tank pH..8.32
effluent ph..6.76
tank KH..11.6
effluent KH..23
tank Ca..340
effluent Ca..370
bpm..78

effluent set at slightly less than continuous stream

it appears that my effluent KH and Ca are a little low..what do i need to do to increase these values?..i think i need to slow the effluent down a bit, but im not sure..any help will be great
thanks
mike

[MarksReef]

I found this link earlier. dragon_slayer gives some great advise.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=280512&perpage=25&highlight=Korallin&pagenumber=2

[tbmoore]

I used a digital ph meter to keep my outlet at 6.5. I would test about one hr after an adjustment. If ph is 6.4 I would cut back co2 a little and if higher increase the co2. then I would test my tank water and watch to see if the dkh is going up or down about every 6hrs. If it was going up I would cut back and adjust the ph back to 6.5. If going down would crank up and adjust ph back to 6.5 coming out of the reactor. I found a tall slinder lab beeker was a great help. Mine is about 1 in in dia and 12 in tall. total is about 150 ml so I could measure how much per min was coming out. To give you an idea I have a 240reef with fare amount of sps. I drip 50ml per min with a ph of 6.5. This should give you a starting point. If you have a 110 you drip would be somewhere around 20ml per min with a ph of 6.5. This will vary depending on hour load or #of hard corals in the tank. I would ck dkh of tank every 6hrs till it started to stay the same then went to every 12 hrs then 24hrs and now once every wk or so. While making these adjustments I tried to keep a little on the high side somewhere about 14 or 15 dkh so if it was climbing I could just turn off the main valve on the co2 bottle till it came back down then made small adjustment and watched for the climb. If it was still climbing cut back a little more. This kept me from having to add any buffers or calcium. It is easier to bring down than up. The main trick is to always know how much you are putting in and always keep the ph at 6.5. Then you just slowly trim down the reactor... Takes a while the first time but then you can write down how much to put in to get you close and you will be able to fine tune quickly. I would use buffers or calcium just to balance the two the first time then the reactor should keep them fairly close. Below I have posted a chart for balancing cal and dkh. Good luck and make small changes...

Here is a Balancing table.


alk dkh calcium

0.00 0.00 360
0.50 1.40 370
1.00 2.80 380
1.50 4.20 390
2.00 5.60 400
2.50 7.00 410
3.00 8.40 420 near sea water
3.50 9.80 430
4.00 11.20 440
4.50 12.60 450 my average
5.00 14.00 460
5.50 15.40 470
6.00 16.80 480 great for frag tank
6.50 18.20 490
7.00 19.60 500