jewels

I am keeping an eye on this one . I too, have been considering the same thing w/ synthetic material.

I would say it depends on your motivation. How often do you move plants around? I have read the best way to remove a plant in that type of set up is to cut it off.

I went back to Praxiar : as I had built my regulator there, for a contents exchange . It was Forty Bucks! :eh:

Is this too much for 10 lbs ?

Did I get hosed and gassed?

I second Joseph Elliots motion. Amecas rock! I have had them since March and they keep it spick & span Do not over feed! (they do better lean) . I saw them @ Pisces a few weeks ago; Do yourself a favor and check the Canadian Aquarium Connection, BlaineP has always got tons.

I have begun to notice a lot of folks mentioning; and using KH2PO4 (mono potassium phosphate), as a source of phosphate. Straight forward enough. What I don't understand is how to account for different sources. Speaking generally for the moment ,a fertilizer labeled as 10-10-10 appears to have equal measures of P and K. Upon closer examination we find the P @ 44% by volume and the K @ 83%. Fine then, the afore mentioned product is actually 4.4% phosphate. So far so good, I tend to get lost at the part where I whip out my handy slide rule to demystify the age old secret of ...Molar Mass...help!?

Looks as though good old K (potassium) sneaks in every time. Observe KNO3 , in that state we have Nitrogen just edging out K at a ratio of 1.5/1

The problem I have encountered is named "Lilly Millers Super Phosphate" guaranteed analysis

" P2O5....source Treble Phosphate........45% "

Where did K go? in this form all we have is P and Oxygen. Coincidence ? Maybe not.. molecular weight of P2O5 is, you guessed it 44 point something%. This product is in the pure oxide form

If a recipe calls for 1 gram, do I disregard the half gram of oxygen per serving and put in 2? Or perhaps it was accounted for already.?

And now for the scary part. if we have one gram of KH2PO4 that split would prove to be only 44% phosphorus by weight and still half of the remainder is oxygen for a near total of 25% P mass by total weight .

Can the same be said of "Muriate of Potash".......K2O pure @ 60%

I am only very new @ this "green" as it were. From what I have read the danger of one half dose means everything else was a double dosed

How should this be approached?

Got a nitrAte test kit? The first bottle should be hydrochloric acid.

nice tip !!

Try a forced water reactor - like on BOOTH's web page.

The biggest exspense is the water pump $15-$30 depending on quality

I have built several different CO2 delivery systems & this one seems to work the best

It takes about an hour to build, and about two days to get your eyes off of it!!

residential plumbing is often ABS

You can get a bubble counter.

I do but the bubbles go by so quickly in the small 2-3" of the bubble oc*nter.

Set a timer to 10, 20 or 30 seconds, then count the bubbles and divide.

Thanks I'll keep that in mind if I ever need to do higher amounts. Right now I have my tank going at a fairly slow rate, about 1-2 b/s from what I can count/estimate, so its not much of a problem at the moment. I was always just wondering how people counted 3-4+b/s as it goes by faster then you can count.

Not something a green thumb will hear every day, but you are playing w/ fire...Assuming you are not involved in a drastic buffering regimen your Co2 levels are completely calculable.

Co2 introduction is one thing but I find consistent absorption to be the vital component. That is, getting it to stay in the tank is the tricky part. You could blow bubbles in there day and night and not raise the levels of CO2. A store bought reactor is the rich mans solution; a little time alloted for research, imagination and inventing to build your own will be much more rewarding. A still surface is is the next aspect to address. When my water level (volume) runs low the filter outputs stir up the water and this allows CO2 to escape. Airstones are out too. Get every thing right and there will be plenty of oxygen.

The only way to truly know the actual level of C02 is to measure it. Saturation is revealed by observing the Ph drop off factored against the Carbonate hardness already present.

In conclusion back to the fire part. After ( over successfully ) tinkering with my DIY reactor within two hours my water "held" enough C02 to drop my Ph by THREE full points !! This was NOT an adjustment in CO2 output , it just wasn't escaping the water as fast. Take a look at the calculator on Chucks Planted Aquarium site. A drop of 3 Ph increments with water @ 110ppm Kh put the CO2 levels in the tank well over 100ppm. Twenty five ppm is to much,,, over thirty can be lethal :boom:

Stay safe and have fun!

Jewels