Oxygen in a planted tank.

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spartoecus

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Jun 10, 2009
Messages
54
Hello everyone

i'm new here and also new to a planted aquarium. I was wondering if i could turn off my air stones now that i have a few plants going pretty strong. Also how can i tell how my O2 and CO2 levels are doing in the tank? I'd really appreciate any help.



My tank has seven full plants and ten pristilla tetras. It's ten gallons.
 
so tanks dont need a air pump anyways. if you are not adding co2 the levels would minimal. as for o2 just watch the fish if they are not gasping on the top of the water they are most likely fine.
 
Hey

i am adding CO2 with a DIY yeast pump but i'm paying attention to the pH to make sure it doesn't drop too much.
 
Are you monitoring your CO2 levels?

If you're adding CO2, you don't want to run airstones. They cause the CO2 you're working so hard to inject to offgas so it's doing you no good.
 
Thank you very much guys. I turned off the airstone this morning when i woke up and i guess i'll leave it off. This will be great news for my girlfriend who hates the sound of the pump at night!

I'll just make sure to check out my fish in the morning to see if they are gasping for air.


I just used that conversion chart on that awesome site provided by mgamer and got a CO2 rating of 80PPM. My fish look totally fine even though it says this is a little high. Any suggestions?... or should i just go with the flow for now.
 
Last edited:
new tests

so this afternoon i did a 50% water change and resupplimented the tank. after letting it sit for a little while i took another tests.

7 pH
kH40
gH 120

=

6.6 ppm.
 
Thanks a ton for all the help neil.

i ran a kH test on my tap water and the results were...

tap water - 80 ppm
tank water -60ish ppm


my pH rose a little bit to around 7.4 but i'm still on the border with my kH. (should of stayed awake in high school chem)
 
I heard that it would be optimal to run air at night due to the nature of plants because they consume O2 at night and consume CO2 during the day. So it is pointless to run your system at night because the plants are not benefiting from it. It would be best if you had everything set up on a timer.
 
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