Replacing evaporated water

[mvcg]

Hi Everybody,
Alright, this may be a silly question but I've got to ask it. I have to use Kent Marine Buffer to get my pH to 8.2 (I use RO water). I have to replace about 1.5 cups of evaporated water everyday. Should the freshwater that I replace it with have the Kent Marine Buffer in it? Is "buffering stuff" like salt and it doesn't evaporate?

Also, my feather duster is looking like it's splitting. The actual feather duster-looking part doesn't come out in one big circle, but more and more, like two smaller ones. Is this normal?

And, finally, I have a 32 gal established reef that I purchased from an LFS. Originally the only current in the tank was from the sump return (built into the acrylic tank on the back). I've added a small powerhead on the opposite side of the tank. I have it on a timer that goes one hour on and two hours off from the hours of 8am to 10pm. Then only one time for one hour at 2am. Am I going overboard with the on-off thing? My hammer coral seems to come out and play a lot more when there is a little current in his part of the tank. On the other hand, my Xenia sp. seems not too pleased with the additional current.

Thank for all the help. This is a fantastic help forum!

-Mark

[fishfreek]

Only 1.5 cups per day from evapoation. Thats good. I gotta replace on average just over 1 gal per day.

Anyway you can either replace it with plain freshwater or with freshwater and buffer. Kind of be up to you if you want to use it in small quanties every day or just dose weekly.

I use kalkwasser (aka pickling lime) in my topoff water daily to maintan alkinity and calcium.

Cycling the water flow is a good idea as on the real reef there is nothing like a PH just puhing water in a continas direction all the time. the Xenia might be unhappy if the PH is blowing directly on it. Possibly positioning the PH so it causes water turbulance would be best. Or having two PH's blowing toward eachother. This would cause a good bit of water turbulance at random directoions in the tank.