CO2 injection

[IronDogg]

Hmm... I just reread your first post and realized that you have a 110 gallon aquarium... Your 2 litre DIY CO2 system won't do squat for you. Actually, it might make a very small difference in CO2 levels for you, but I doubt it... For 110 gallons, you should either go to a commercial CO2 system, or add about 4 more DIY kits...

If you have any test kits to test your kH (Carbonate Hardness), and your pH, you can enter those values into a CO2 Calculator to monitor your tank CO2 levels... I'm kinda curious to see if you get any changes at all with one kit and 110 gallons of water...

[Oxquo]

Hey I am the master at boiling over my DIY co2 unit hahaha. No ones fish are as drunk as mine I'll bet, that's why they spawn so well... JK well maybe not. It is true that I have had many cloudy tank days due to drunken CO2 mixing but who has it hurt? I have never lost a fish due to it and the cloudiness goes away after a couple of days. Trick is to mix it and then lightly cap it and put it in the tub with curtain closed overnight. Let it mix on it's own after one night of the loose fitting lid if nothing frothed over Hook it up. Using a backflow valve is also a great idea as letting your tubing hang in the tank and on the floor causes the infamous slow drip system. I bought the entire cheap Hagen CO2 kit but only use the diffuser, I don't even like it as much as an airstone but like it for bubble counts, once it is set right I go back to the airstone. Another word of advice if you have a water softener shut it off before gathering your CO2 water soft water sucks at making bubbles for some reason. If your DIY CO2 unit spills over and the infamous jail brew gets in your tank, sit back and have a brewsky with the fish or bring them over to party with my little dependants.

[KTV]

Well, it's started making bubbles today, about 2 every second. We'll see if actually makes a difference in a week's time.

I doubt if I'll see any improvements but it's worth a try.

[Oxquo]

One of the things about planted tanks is that everything is in a chain reaction. adding CO2 can make a huge difference but with the addition of CO2 be sure to keep your iron in check. I think that ideally having CO2 on a timer in sync with lighting would be so cool and beneficial yet having an iron doser to work with it adding a few drops every night at lights out would be even that much more cool. If I could create a robot to do this I could grow great plants without effort I am sure. Back to what I was saying, as soon as I begun adding CO2 in good healthy amounts my iron levels began depleting faster and faster. My next stage was to remove the carbon from my filter and much to my suprise, my iron levels lasted alot longer. I just started using a daily dose fertilliser again so I am not sure how this will go as of yet but before it worked well. On low light tanks I find alot of fertilisers too strong and algae wreaks havoc in my tank. For low light single tube lighting I found CO2 and plant grow also a touch of seachem iron worked best. If it doesn't work try something new I guess. If it all just gets plain frustrating, then wait a couple of weeks till that CO2 brew gets nice and frothy, suck it down and forget about it all, then create an african rift tank. lol

[Garhan]

Oxquo, geepers man where trying to encourge this plant enthusiast, not make drunk out of him, but what the hey...lol

Reminds me of another story or article I read, not about plants but it gets you there anyways..

I read an article and I have finally found inner peace.

> >>

> >> The article read: "The way to achieve inner peace is to

> >> finish all the things you've started."

> >>

> >> So I looked around the house to see all the things I

> >> started and hadn't finished... and before leaving the

> >> house this morning I finished off a bottle of red wine,

> >> a bottle of white wine, the Bailey's, Kahlua, Wild

> >> Turkey, and Crown Royal, the Prozac, some Valium, some

> >> chips, ice cream, and a box of chocolates. All my DIY projects are now complete..whala.

> >>

> >> You have no idea how freakin' good I feel....

> >>

> >> hope you are all having as great a day!

Cheers, or belly up.

Garhan

[KTV]

Haha, I have a few DIY projects like that on hold right now, maybe I'll go finish those off too.

Ok, if this doesn't show any improvements in two weeks, next paycheck is going towards building a Co2 injection system.

Fish keeping used to be so easy...... put water in the tank, wait 2 weeks, put fish in the tank, change the water every now and then, when fish die, buy a new fish.

Now it's, watch this paramter, make sure to same some of this but not to much, especially if there's this. :well: :well: :well: :boxed: :boxed:

[Oxquo]

It still is easy, for a fishkeeper, You have now entered the more geeky side, what we call aquarists. Yes, the true fishgeek. Scientist, doctor, biologist, etc,etc,etc... the list goes on. To sum it all up, God. To be an aquarist you must test your skills at becoming a god to the small World before you. You will decide when they eat or when they face a recession, when drought comes or the rainy season arrives, whether it is hot and sunny today or cool and cloudy. Who lives who dies, who is prolific and who is not. Furthermore, whether you are a god or a dog. So you see it's not that complicated after all. LOL.

Back to the CO2, 2 per second I don't think will make a change whatsoever even if well disolved. Then again this all depends on what kind of tank you are after. Going for a fully fledged aquascape covered from top to bottom with greenery but very few fish if anything more than an SAE, I would up my CO2 heavy during the day and close it off at night alternating with some good bubblers to get the oxy flowing when they need it most. The DIY bottle as Garhan mentioned doesn't have to be a 2L bottle, it could be a 5 gallon gas can or a plastic water bottle. The truth of the matter is, CO2 is incredible on a well planted tank and a complete waste of time on a tank with very little plants. It can definitely change the way you fertilise and since the two must work with each other, the amount or frequency that you will now need to fertilise. Not long ago I had seen a setup just for plants. CO2 during the day and Medical quality oxy at night running on a hospital injection system. The very bottom of the tank had an undergravel filter though they had attached a screen across the top of it and what looked like a thin layer of floss on top of that. Above they had a mixture of laterite and clay, then a nice thick bed of peat plates, a little gravel and silica sand on top. Not completely sure how the whole system worked but the plants were beautiful. The sad thing is that no one mentioned one of the most crucial points and that was lighting. Most books tell us that on anything less that 1 watt per gallon, CO2 is seldomly that effective. They say that it is the bright lit plants that will consume the most CO2 and require the most iron and minerals to grow. Therefore having crypts and aponogetons with a hint of java fern and java moss would not be very effective in either a bright tank or a CO2 injected tank. I do keep alot of low light plants and find that in smaller doses the CO2 is beneficial but at 6 bubbles per second, I develope a nasty algae that almost takes a torch to get it off my glass and my plecos hate to eat. At the same rate some of the plants Garhan and i have exchanged with each other have failed to do well in the other persons tank although our water properties and heat is nearly identical. So to make things more confusing take lighting into consideration before deciding how much CO2 and fertiliser to add.

[chloeclose]

I tried DIY CO2 on my 55 last year... I used one, then two, then 3 of those Hagen thingies, I found for me it was just not working... it was too hard to keep at a stable level. Now I have a Sera pressurized unit that I got from Henry and the difference is AMAZING!! My plant growth has exploded! And soooo much less work, for me it was defintely worth the $$$. Good thing Henry does layaway.

[Oxquo]

Yeah few stores know their plants like Henry and My guess is he has you using seachems iron supplement by now, God I love the effects of that and CO2 together. The PMDD fertilliser that I got from Garhan is what I am using now so I will see how that goes here is a page that will make most plant freaks drool. My favorite is actually a 10 gallon slate botton but to each their own.Az Gardens

[Garhan]

I made a comment on this site earlier that I could make a great planted setup for 100.00. This would be a good example of what I was refering to (the 10 gallon slate bottom). A 10 or even 20 gallon can be very pleasing. But most people are all hung up on 90 - 150 planted tanks and dont really consider the cost of what it takes to build a large tank out properly, usually we end up with good intentions and a poor result due to budget constraints. Often just the appropriate quantity of plant stock can be very expensive. You can not purchase one or even two of most plants and get a good effect. You need 5 -10 bunches of the same plant depending on the tank and even then you still likely need to let it grow in and propogate more stock to be replants in that same larger tank. But if you set up 2 or 3 tanks that are 10-20 gallon and use the cuttings from these tanks to fill your 90-150 it will be cheaper on stock alone to do a good job on the larger setup. Dont heat these tanks let them run at room temperature 68-72 degrees, plus heat from the smaller light fixtures for the tanks. At Home Depot the sell a shop flourescent light fixture on sale for $9.98 it has 2 x T-12 -24"x 20 watt bulbs. So 40 watts on a 10 gallon, that is perfection, in a small package.Moderate or even no filtration, no fish or very few. Grow your own. I dont recall who said that you likely could not achieve pearling in plants in a 110 gallon tank with a DIY c02 system. I was wondering if that was a comment from experience. A pressurized system would be idea, but my experience with a 150 at 24" of depth (Oceanic) can be done with a DIY system using a single bottle. But that is not to say you can't tie in 2 or even 3 bottles that are setup 1 week apart. I know (1 bottle)I have done it and maintained that tank setup for 2 years before I got lazy. That was the first planted tank I entered into a local contest and it was 2nd place but unless your first it doesnt matter. People dont remember the losers (2nd or not). My general advice from a managerial line of thinking is dont listen to anocdotal evidence, proof or nothing. Here is a poor pick of that 150 I was taking about. I have others but they are 1.4MB or larger in size. Can anyone tell me how I can get these posted.

Cheers,

Garhan :ml:

[Smokey]

Evening Garhan.

Smokey

[Garhan]

Bye the way I also own one of those Hagen System. (Why not at the introductory offer of $20.00, well Ok., now at 38.95 +_)The bottle is great, the diffuser.. :baby: I went to the micro bubbler and found a huge difference, the only difference that I can think of is huge amounts of micro bubbles, larger amount of exposed C02 bubble surface area and as a result better absorption of the C02 into the water. Simpley more effective a diffuser. This was in the 55 I posted that I entered into the ACE contest 2 years ago. Dont get me wrong I am sure pressurized systems work and work well. I personally cant justify the cost. Cash is usually not an issue with me either. But to me a pressurized system doesnt give me better results than DIY systems if they are run correctly. I have seen both and in my opinion I can do just as well without, and have it most cases. When I have not done as well it was usually a different issue i amount of light,hours of light, substrate deffiencies, types of plants relating to light volume,temperature issues ( not all plants like 80+ degrees) fetilizer issues, usually shows up in leaf problems, holes, fading, falling off, bugs eating, poor root developement, poor colour, not flowering, not growing in general. These issues for me a considerably more difficult to see, cure and maintain or repair than fixing a disease problem lets say in a fish. There is the challenge for me. Plants dont react as quickly as fish do to resolved problems nor do they show a quick change in developement. You might fix the problem but the plant still looks like the holes are still there. Guess what they are too. Your results will show up in the new leaf developement. The old ones are done .

Cheers,

Garhan

[Garhan]

Hey how is it going Smokey.

Garhan

[chloeclose]

Yup, Henry rocks!! :smilebig:

I actually haven't had a chance to discuss ferts with him yet... was planning to maybe do that today if I can find some time somewhere...

I agree DIY CO2 can be done... with great results... just not by me!! :P

I actually have my pressurized unit hooked up to the diffuser that came with the Hagen system... do you mind explaining why you've found it sucks Garhan? I've been thinking about switching to something else... not sure what though... although not for the reason you might think... I've found that I've had to keep rescuing fish that have gotten stuck in it... anyone else ever have this problem?

[Garhan]

The diffuser in the Hagen system has the bubbles travelling up a ramping system. it starts as a larger buuble and as it travels it is absorbed into the water. Bye the time it reaches the top ramp and if any bubble is left it is relaeased from the track. Good in theroy and does exactly as it claims. The surface area on this buuble is a good sizes per individual bubble. But none the less it is less surface area per large bubble rather than taking that 1 bubble and making literaly hundreds of smaller buubles out of the same volume of gas. There is considerably more surface area per volume of gas in the micro bubbles and more water to gas contact. Therefore you have a greater intake of gas into the water.

Secondly the Hagen diffusser will clog or grow things on the tracking surface and the bubbles eventually will fall off at the points of contact with the contaminated area (not smooth track). other times the buubles will run into each other until they are to large and again will fall off the track. If it is in perfect condition or setup properly, (balanced, level) for the bubbles to track then it is OK. But when it gets dirty, suction cups fail, become out of level clogs, fish get stuck in it or whatever, then it fails.

The Rena micro bubbler doesnt trap fish, seldom clogs, produces higher volumes of surface area for the same gas out put. Easy to clean, (suck water in and out a few times or soak in bleach overnite. Many plus, + situations.

The main issue is reliability to steadily deliever micro bubbles. Second higher amounts of surface area contact to water ratio for same gas volumes. Simply math....

Cheers, :beer:

Garhan :ml: