WarEagleNR88
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
The post title says it all. This is why... almost 130 ppm dissolved CO2.
It's been kind of an experiment in my 10G--no fish, only snails--and that's to test different variables. I usually test on Wednesday or Sunday or both. This past week though, I cranked the bubble counter to about 3-4 bubbles per second just to see how high I could get the CO2. It's so fast, I can barely count them.
I'm using a milwaukee regulator w/ solenoid and bubble counter, milwaukee pH controller, and a 5# CO2 bottle. I've been injecting the CO2 directly into the filter intake of my Penguin 125 under 40W of 6500K PC Lights with bad reflectors. And these are the Walmart PC Lights of America bulbs, too. Before I bought the controller I was using a simple Red Sea test kit for low pH now I use the milwaukee controller, a Hagen GH/KH test for the KH, and the nitrates using a Red Sea nitrate test kit. This has been going on for about 3 months. The nitrates have been around 0-5 ppm constantly. More times than not it's been nearly zero. The pH has been around 7.0 until as of late. The KH has been around 10 to 11 (hard to tell with my test kit). Tonight I tested, here are the results.
pH: ~6.4
KH: 190 ppm or 10.6* (19 drops of solution)
Temp: ~78*F
Nitrate: ~0 ppm (maybe 1)
Using Chuck Gadd's trusty Planted Aquarium Calculator, I calculate that to be 127 ppm of dissolved CO2. Lots of O2 saturation!
Why I'm not having explosive growth is this--very little available nutrients. Every time I dose just a little, my plants seem to grow inches overnight. And then they stop growing as they've used up the available macros. Then hair algae grows. Then I've got to cut the plants and replant because it is a 10G.
Part II of the experiment: dose an insane amount of Potassium Nitrate. Next week I'll follow up. It will be interesting to see what will happen. I'm expecting other nutrients will not be available to give the plants what they need and the plants will show a lot of stress by next Wednesday. I'm not sure what the algae will do though. But the plants will survive, they always do.
It's been kind of an experiment in my 10G--no fish, only snails--and that's to test different variables. I usually test on Wednesday or Sunday or both. This past week though, I cranked the bubble counter to about 3-4 bubbles per second just to see how high I could get the CO2. It's so fast, I can barely count them.
I'm using a milwaukee regulator w/ solenoid and bubble counter, milwaukee pH controller, and a 5# CO2 bottle. I've been injecting the CO2 directly into the filter intake of my Penguin 125 under 40W of 6500K PC Lights with bad reflectors. And these are the Walmart PC Lights of America bulbs, too. Before I bought the controller I was using a simple Red Sea test kit for low pH now I use the milwaukee controller, a Hagen GH/KH test for the KH, and the nitrates using a Red Sea nitrate test kit. This has been going on for about 3 months. The nitrates have been around 0-5 ppm constantly. More times than not it's been nearly zero. The pH has been around 7.0 until as of late. The KH has been around 10 to 11 (hard to tell with my test kit). Tonight I tested, here are the results.
pH: ~6.4
KH: 190 ppm or 10.6* (19 drops of solution)
Temp: ~78*F
Nitrate: ~0 ppm (maybe 1)
Using Chuck Gadd's trusty Planted Aquarium Calculator, I calculate that to be 127 ppm of dissolved CO2. Lots of O2 saturation!
Why I'm not having explosive growth is this--very little available nutrients. Every time I dose just a little, my plants seem to grow inches overnight. And then they stop growing as they've used up the available macros. Then hair algae grows. Then I've got to cut the plants and replant because it is a 10G.
Part II of the experiment: dose an insane amount of Potassium Nitrate. Next week I'll follow up. It will be interesting to see what will happen. I'm expecting other nutrients will not be available to give the plants what they need and the plants will show a lot of stress by next Wednesday. I'm not sure what the algae will do though. But the plants will survive, they always do.