Co2 & Hagen

[PrettyFishies]

I have the Hagen Natural in a 20 gal tank. The PH is 7 and the KH 4 which gives me 12 ppm of Co2. Not what I intended. What can I do? Can I get a more efficient diffuser like a glass diffuser that goes at the bottom? If I add a 2L bottle mixture of yeast to the tank the Hagen comes with, will that be enough?

 

[An t-iasg]

For a 20 gallon tank, yes, you'll want to add a 2 liter bottle with a yeast mixture along with the Hagen system. Two 2-liter bottles may be even better, but you can try to use the Hagen along with one 2-liter bottle.

Diffusers are sometimes tricky with DIY CO2. (I say that because I'm not at all the DIY type!)

The ladder was too big for my 5 gallon tank. It fit in the tank, but took up a fair amount of room. I use two different diffusers (I have two 5-gallon tanks, each with their own Hagen bottle.) In one tank I'm using a Kordon Mist-Air sintered glass airstone, the "fine" variety. (It comes in fine, medium, and coarse.) This airstone is wonderful! However, I have purchased more of them, to put in the other tank, and to have a spare while one is drying out occasionally. None of the others work - just this one Kordon airstone.

In my other tank I have a Rena microbubbler airstone. It doesn't work as well as the Kordon and only gives me about 10 ppm CO2. I'm still trying to figure out what to do for this tank. There are lots of diffusers online - that little glass one that looks like a little pipe - is that the one you're talking about? I called DrsFosterSmith to ask about it and they said it only works with pressurized CO2.

I also used a Red Sea 200 diffuser. I bought one, it worked, so I bought more and the new ones did not work! Ugghh! I stopped using the one that did work for now - it was so hard to "open" for cleaning.

So, I'm in the same boat as you when it comes to diffusers - I'm still trying to figure it out. I would suggest, though, that you add a 2-liter bottle of the yeast mixture like you were thinking of doing.

 

[PrettyFishies]

Is it possible to add the 2L w/o breaking the siphon?

 

[Purrbox]

Well if there was a siphon going on, that would mean water going from the tank to your bottles. I'm guessing you actually meant the CO2 pressure, in which case the answer is probably no. Only way this would be at all possible is if you had installed a check valve. Just in case you were wondering, the way you want to add the extra bottle is by using an airline T-connector. This way both bottles will feed into the same diffuser.

 

[PrettyFishies]

Now that I've added 2 2L bottle, no bubbles. The mix is doing something, but even the Hagen mix is not relaly producing bubbles. Is it probably a non airtight setup? or will it just take time to build pressure?

An t-iasg: Do you just put teh Kordon aistone in the tank attached to teh mix bottle?

 

[Purrbox]

It will take a few hours to build up enough pressure to start producing bubbles again. If it still isn't producing bubbles after a few hours, I'd recommending double checking all of your connections. With changing everything around one of the connections may have come loose.

 

[An t-iasg]

My Kordon airstone has a hard plastic tube attached to it. I put my gray Hagen CO2 line right onto the Kordon hard plastic tubing.