Low PH - Something You Might Never Have Considered

So I just read a post by someone with high dKH and low PH asking why you would have the two. I was going to respond there, but decided to write a new post because the story I'm about to write is pretty interesting.

A number of years ago I was running a very successful small business in Orlando. We got an acquisition offer from a larger company in Ft Lauderdale and decided to take it. This company was in a major growth stage and we started hiring out the wazoo. We went from 13 people to 50 in a matter of months.

How does this relate to reef keeping?

Well I had a 125g reef in the office. Great tank, lots of good corals and fish. The problem was that I had less and less time to pay attention to it because I was working harder under the new company - usually 70-100 hour weeks. As time went on I found that I was getting some bad headaches from all the time in the office and I attributed it to stress.

About six months in I noticed that I had the same symptoms that this other guy had: high dKH (not overly high ~12) while my PH was falling. At the lowest it was about 7.6! I tried everything to raise the PH, but it wouldn't go up.

I was perplexed. I started combing the boards for anyone with similar issues and I found an article talking about people dosing with CO2 and that doing too much of it would drop your PH.

Then a light went off in my head...

Low PH, headaches. What causes both? An over abundance of CO2. I called an environmental testing company and scheduled them to come out to test. The results were telling...

They came out early Tuesday morning AFTER A THREE DAY WEEKEND before anyone had come in the office. They measured the CO2 at 800 ppm. By midday it had risen to 2500 ppm. To put things in perspective, the maximum allowable healthy limit for office buildings is 400 ppm.

We had been hiring so quickly and cramming people into our building that the ventilation systems could not handle the capacity. Even after a three day weekend it was twice the allowable limit. By midday, six times. You can only imagine what it was like by the end of the day (we didn't test).

We immediately bought window fans, opened up windows and started venting outside air. Almost immediately the headaches went away (the physical ones, anyway, the work headaches persisted for many years to come ) and the PH in my tank got back up to a healthy 8.3.

So the thing to be learned from this story is that things outside your tank can most definitely affect the tank itself. I have subsequently read about people with a similar problem in the north where their houses stay closed up for a long winter with minimum air exchange.

My tank was quite literally the canary in the coal mine. Fortunately the canary didn't die in this one

 

excellent observations rocketman. and thnx , just gave us all more to think\worry about.

 

Very interesting! ... Makes me wish I wasnt living in a ton of snow and could open some windows now! LOL.

+K!

 

And in the south where the a/c is pretty much on 24/7/365.

 

that is really interesting! i am going through this problem right now...

And being in Washington in the winter now, there is no way to open windows or doors because its so damn cold out side. what can i do to prevent this with out opening windows?

 

Put an air pump outside and feed airline tubing from it to your tank. You may have to drill a hole if you can't find any other way to get to your tank from the outside.

 

Yep, we have seen the ph of reef taks go down quite a bit during our local reef club meetings. At one, the tank controller actually went into alarm mode.

The easiest way to remedy this is to simply have your vent line to the skimmer fed outside air. Newer homes are worse with this because they are so airtight, but older homes breathe a little more and don't get affected as much.

 

This doesn't make sense, CO2 shouldn't just affect pH it also affects alk, because both pH and alk are related. CO2 dissolved in water increases carbonic acid (H2CO3)(which is the soluble form of CO2) which dissolves bicarbonate. Bicarbonate is a measurement of alk and this reaction is what lowers pH.

Add into the equation calcium carbonate which reacts with H2CO3 and you get calcium and bicarbonate which means a higher pH and alk as seen in calcium reactors. With the deficit of CaCO3 you would just get an increase of carbonic acid which would cause a reduction in alk and in pH; not just a reduction in pH.

There may have been a reduction of O2 and an increase in CO2 which would have affected pH but I can't see why your alk would have gone up and your pH down, this breaks all the rules of your water chemistry...

 

i think it was otty that turned me on to this fact, there was something in his build about this.
I now keep the windows open in my room when I'm home. has helped a lot. I never got bad hedaches though so it couldn't have been to much.

 

Yep this is a common problem. I do an air change everyday. Just like a water change. I leave my door open for 10 minutes twice a day to let fresh air in. Keeps things in check.