Outside air intake skimmer question.

Drill baby!!Drill........

 

Parents may or may not be supportive of this one. LOL "Can I borrow the drill, I need to make a whole in the house/brick."

I was thinking of running an 8' airline tubing hose and cutting out a section of the sponge around the bottom of the window to fit the hose, so it will still close around the hose.

 

I run my Cheato lights- 200W total on a massive amount of chaeto almost truely opposite my DT LED lights on
my DT. I always did this b/c I learned that it help keep my Ph stable.
I have no controller or Ph probe.

In 3+ yrs, I think I've checked my Ph maybe 3 times.

I do check my Alk however, ~ weekly/bi monthly.

So, you now have a probe that shows you you have Ph swings?
Are your corals suffering?
Could it be that you are merely chasing a # that doesn't really have to be chased?

As an RN, you may be aware in treating labs solely because it's a # out of range? LIke in Medicine, you can treat the #'s, or treat the patient.

I guess what I'm saying here is if the internal house conditions are that far off the outside conditions, and running the skimmer air intake outside makes that big a difference, unless it's extremely hot of cold, maybe some more house ventilation would be in order?
I'm certainly NOT an HVAC expert, and don't know much about that however.

This is not the first time I have heard of this technique- using outside air as you skimmer intake source, and won't be the last.
As I type this, I look up at my 180DT Reef, and ask myself if I'm going to start checking my Ph more?
Na, not on your life.

If things were looking good in my DT- (happy with mine btw), I'd ignore that probe altogether.
Maybe that's why my system and DT 'just isn't all that' however?

I'm not attacking anyone here, and the methodlogy behind this seems sensible enough, and it does seem to work for alot of people.

 

Just to comment on this because it sounds like you have a similar situation as me. I also have a huge problem with PH during the summer months. My apartment turns into a CO2 tank when the windows close and the AC goes on my PH sinks from about 8.2 to 7.8 during the day and 7.6 at night. So to attempt to combat this, I threw the skimmer intake line out the window. This did almost nothing in my case. I think that the gas exchange between the surface of the water in the tank is greater than the gas exchange happening in the skimmer. I also run kalk during the night to try and damped the PH a bit and it helps but not enough. At this point I lost all my SPS coral and a few LPS due to the PH issue. My next step that I was thinking about doing with the tank is putting a glass lid on the top to minimize the gas exchange at the surface of the water and the room since it's like a CO2 sponge. This way most of the gas exchange happening will be in the skimmer body.

 

I seems to me that either way, you will be still dealing with the same reservoir of air that you are drawing from. The air going into the skimmer will still have the same proportion of co2. You would only be limiting the amount of exchange and the tank would be less stable due to internal fluctuations. I wish I could offer you a better alternative but I don't know one off the top of my head.

 

wouldn't it be a different reservoir of air since the skimmer line is out the window and drawing outside air? I would only be limiting the exchange from inside household air which is higher in CO2 than outside.

 

Todd I completely see where you are coming from but I think my main problem is the air volume inside my house. I live in a very tiny house 678 square feet so the percentage of co2 is much grater as it has much less space to diffuse in. I have been having problems from day 1 with reefing (in this house) getting stony corals and even coralline to grow and I never could figure out why. After getting a pH probe and monitoring my pH I diagnosed the problem with my tank being more acidotic then ideal. Pulling more fresh air into my house via skimmer intake has helped immensely. My patient(my tank) has been complaining and I never had the proper tools to assess him and provide proper treatment. I have already started to see coralline take hold in a few spots. I know all tanks are completely different, it just turns out mine has a chronic pH issue and after proper testing and treatment I have noticed a huge different in 1 week.

 

This is my graph. The red circle is the time I put the skimmer line outside. It made a huge difference for me.

 

I completely overlooked that RC. In that case, I'd say it's worth a try. Do you have an open sump under the tank?

 

I guess you can call it an open sump even though it's under the stand and the stand doesn't have any air circulating through it so I wasn't thinking about sealing that off as well.