Snowing in Mixing tank

[scooter413]

First of all thank you everyone for the advice given on the last problem I had with nitrates skyrocketing. I have since slowly corrected the problem from all the advice and now they are down to 4ppm instead of greater than 160ppm.

Now for a new problem. I am on a well and have extremely high CO2 and was burning through the di resin in about 30 gallons. I have read all of the previous post and set up a holding tank with a air stone to eliminate that problem. Then I run that through the DI resin and all is good so far. The second tank holds the water that I mix with the salt and I heat it and keep it mixing with a pump for at least 24 hours until I do the water change. The problem I have is that I added seachem reef buffer to bring the ph up and it started precipitating out and now it has covered everything in the holding tank, heater and pump. Do I need to drain this all out clean it and start over or can i use that water now that everything has fallen out. The mixed water has a ph of 7.95 dkh of 12.5 and magnesium of 1600 calcium of 400 and a salinity 1.026.

I guess I added to much buffer without checking the parameters first. Wont do that again. At least it is a holding tank and not my aquarium.

 

[jennm]

What are you using to check pH?

The residue shouldn't harm anything, it's up to you whether you want to start over. I've seen that happen when somebody accidentally overdosed their tank with buffer, but it didn't do any harm, except it looked awful with a white coating for a bit.

Jenn

 

[scooter413]

A marine pinpoint meter.


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[jennm]

Have you calibrated it recently?

While higher CO2 may drop the pH, if you've corrected that, you should have a pH closer to 8.3, especially after adding enough buffer to precipitate. If the pH was really that low, I don't think the buffer would precipitate like that.

Jenn

 

[scooter413]

I had calibrated it in the last three days. The saltwater mixed would show a ph of 7.8 then after the buffer it went to 8.4. The next day it would be back to 7.8 so that's when I buffered again and the snow storm began. I had a little one on the first day but quickly dissipated . The ph today was back to 7.8 but a lot of sludge white stuff coated all over everything.


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[jennm]

Do you have another way of testing? IE - Test kit? Something doesn't seem quite right.

Jenn

 

[scooter413]

I will check it again with a api test kit. I have test strips for ph and and they were in the same ballpark.

 

[jennm]

None of those is terribly reliable either, I'm afraid :-/

I'd suggest a better quality kit. API is the worst kit out there, IMO, and the strips are even worse.

Jenn