Went downstairs last night to check the tanks and found the PH between 2.8 and 3.2! Logic kept telling us that the PH could NOT have been 3. The fish were still swimming, corals had PE, LPS were fat and healthy.
In spite of the tank looking fine given the PH reading, it took everything we had not to start a water change, dump PH up into the tank, etc... starting to try to fix the problem. Opening the windows and turning on the fans helped a little bit bringing the PH up slightly, but it was still bouncing all over the place. 3.4, 3.8, 4.2, 3.4 in 4-5 seconds.
I called Rich to see what he thought about it and he suggested stray voltage in the tank.
So we tested another tank of water (separate system) and it had a stable, normal PH. Then we tested a cup of tank water out of the system. 8.02, just where it always is (and rock solid to boot).
Ok, that's easy, turn everything off and then turn stuff on one at a time until the problem appears, right? Nope. Not so much. Turn everything off and the PH is STILL all over the place (and still down around 4).
After scratching our heads and pondering a bit we moved the temp probe out of the tank and into another body of water that's about the same temp, but not connected to our system, while the PH probe was in the main system. AHA! That was it. The temperature probe was suddenly (as this has been running fine for over a year) causing the PH to look insane, but only when they share the same body of water (and one in the sump and the other in the frag tank wasn't good enough, because the water was "touching").
The temp probe is now sitting in a specimin box inside the fuge to separate it from the PH probe until we can replace it (yeah PA group buy). Any thoughts as to what could have suddenly caused this problem? Ballasts aren't the problem as we had every light, pump, fan, etc near the tank unplugged during testing (including the lights in the basement).
In spite of the tank looking fine given the PH reading, it took everything we had not to start a water change, dump PH up into the tank, etc... starting to try to fix the problem. Opening the windows and turning on the fans helped a little bit bringing the PH up slightly, but it was still bouncing all over the place. 3.4, 3.8, 4.2, 3.4 in 4-5 seconds.
I called Rich to see what he thought about it and he suggested stray voltage in the tank.
So we tested another tank of water (separate system) and it had a stable, normal PH. Then we tested a cup of tank water out of the system. 8.02, just where it always is (and rock solid to boot).
Ok, that's easy, turn everything off and then turn stuff on one at a time until the problem appears, right? Nope. Not so much. Turn everything off and the PH is STILL all over the place (and still down around 4).
After scratching our heads and pondering a bit we moved the temp probe out of the tank and into another body of water that's about the same temp, but not connected to our system, while the PH probe was in the main system. AHA! That was it. The temperature probe was suddenly (as this has been running fine for over a year) causing the PH to look insane, but only when they share the same body of water (and one in the sump and the other in the frag tank wasn't good enough, because the water was "touching").
The temp probe is now sitting in a specimin box inside the fuge to separate it from the PH probe until we can replace it (yeah PA group buy). Any thoughts as to what could have suddenly caused this problem? Ballasts aren't the problem as we had every light, pump, fan, etc near the tank unplugged during testing (including the lights in the basement).
