Counting Bubbles ?

[jibboo]

I just recently bought a Nutrafin CO2 Natural Plant System (Hagen).

http://www.thatpetplace.com/Products/KW/plant,system/Class//T1/F12+0171+0966/EDP/34560/Itemdy00.aspx

and I was wondering how do I know how much CO2 to dose? This is basically like the DIY CO2 method (it just comes with all the parts and puts the yeast in packets). I've consulted the charts on Chuck's pages and I currently have (before CO2) about 4ppm of CO2 (7.6 pH and 5 or 6 deg KH)

I have a 55g tank with 130watts of CF lighting.

So anyways, the CO2 system is beginning to crank out some bubbles ... is there some way to know if I'm getting enough/too much CO2 by watching/counting the bubbles? or should I just continue to run ph & KH tests every day/couple days/week?

tia

 

[TankGirl]

Check it daily until you see some changes, but I'm afraid that little grey canister is not going to come close to what you will need for a tank that size. They are good for tanks about 20gal and under. You might not see much results at all with this single unit.

You can consider supplementing with a soda bottle DIY setup and connect the airline from that into the airline you currently have, so both are feeding bubbles into your ladder. When I was using DIY I used 2 2-liter bottles on my 55, but became so frustrated with it that I switched to pressurized.

 

[malkore]

Counting bubbles only tells you how many bubbles you're trying to dissolve...not the actual CO2 levels in the tank. So indeed you need to continue testing pH once a day for a few days. After 3 days the CO2 will be going as fast as it'll go, so you can stop after that.

However, a single nutrafin unit on a 55gallon tank is barely going to make a dent. Tanks that large really need a forced reactor or in-line reactor on the canister filter to get 100% dissolve rate of CO2. And that little grey canister really isn't meant for a tank larger than 10 gallons...so you're probably not going to get enough CO2 production to see much of a change in pH.

 

[rubysoho]

I don't know, my LFS has a DIY CO2 in their 55 gallon display tank and while I keep hearing bigger tanks need pressurized CO2, this tank is doing awesome!!! They used regular gravel and to my knowledge no liquid fertilizers. Oh, and 3 watts/gallon (can you tell I pestered them with questions?). They used one of those medium sized gatorade bottles (about three times the size as the single serving bottles...make sense?) with some tubing and an airstone at the end. I'll be replicating it in my tank when I get some time, hopefully this weekend.

 

[TankGirl]

Don't know what their tap water params are but there is no way I could achieve adequate CO2 ppm in my 55 with a setup like that.

 

[malkore]

airstones are a poor way to diffuse CO2 into a tank. I'd like to see that LFS's water parameters.

A buddy of mine ran DIY on his 55g. He used 60% RO and 40% tap water, so his Kh was only about 4degrees.
He ran 2 one gallon jugs on the tank with a vortex mini reactor, and kept about 18ppm of CO2.

By all means Ruby, try it out...you might be one of the lucky few that pulls off DIY without a bunch of headaches with a tank that size. TG was just warning you to not get your hopes up too high in case the outcome isn't favorable.

DIY is cheap, but far from convenient...to the point that I paid for a second CO2 system so I could run my 20gallon tanks upstairs off pressurized.

 

[frog girl]

Wow I must be weird because I am trying to slow down my DIY CO2 from a single 2 liter soda bottle because it keeps causing my pH to go down too much (60 gallon tank- but six sided so relatively little surface area). Mine is working great but certainly takes lots of fiddling with.

Everyone keeps telling me that I can't overdo with DIY CO2. I must admit to being a bit confused.

 

[jibboo]

malkore ... you were right ... this small setup is really not making any difference in my ph or kh. I found an ad for this product in an old copy of Tropical Fish Hobbyist and it says that it is designed for "up to 20 gallons". So, I may try your suggestion of attaching in a DIY CO2 bottle into the ladder with the product and see if I can get any better results.