Learning pressurized CO2 in planted tanks

[Patrick_G]

I’ve been offline for a bit but I have been working on something new. I finally have all the necessary parts for my first co2 system. I’ll be using it on the 75 gal tank in my sig. It’s been doing ok as low tech but I’m getting frustrated with losing some plants over all mediocre plant health in general. 

Edited July 30, 2022 by Patrick_G

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Patrick_Gyou went with FZone, NilocG and Aquario from what I can see. Where did you go through for the CO2 grad tubing? 

[Patrick_G]

On 7/22/2022 at 5:03 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

@Patrick_Gyou went with FZone, NilocG and Aquario from what I can see. Where did you go through for the CO2 grad tubing? 

It’s JARDLI brand tubing from amazon. I had some gift cards and some co2 gear was included in prime day. The discounts were too good to pass up. The tubing, regulator and drop checker were all discounted. The Aquario diffuser is from Aquarium Co-op and the Tank is from Central Welding. 
I think the total cost is about $300. That’s about $220 less than a co2art elite  kit with an extra needle valve/bubble counter. Hopefully it’s reliable and I don’t regret buying the FZone. 
 

[Jeff]

I'm almost to that point as well. I'm waiting on the Co-Op regulator 

[Patrick_G]

On 7/22/2022 at 5:41 PM, Jeff said:

I'm almost to that point as well. I'm waiting on the Co-Op regulator 

I can’t wait to see what it looks like. I KNOW it’ll have a long cord😁. 
 

[Patrick_G]

I hope this thread helps other beginners. It’s pretty easy to install a pressurized CO2 system,  this is my first crack at it and I haven’t run into any major issues so far. I’ll post info on my setup and I’m sure I’ll have questions for more experienced hobbyist. 

This is the regulator. It’s dual stage. That means there’s one stage for the pressure coming from the tank and one stage for the pressure going to the tank. This prevents “end of tank dump”. A tank gets low and a single stage regulator can dump all the remaining co2 into the tank and kill the fish. This is apparently rare, but it can happen.  The black box is an electronic solenoid switch so the system can be controlled by a timer. The co2 gets switched off at night when the plants are not actively photosynthesizing. The metal bit on the left is two valves to control the flow of co2 into one or two tanks. The glass cylinders are so you can count how many bubbles per min are going into the tank. The tubing is rated to be resistant to co2. 

[gjcarew]

Welcome to the dark side, I hope your scissors are sharp!

[nabokovfan87]

I made this thread if you find anything super awesome to share as well 🙂
 

 

On 7/29/2022 at 8:31 PM, Patrick_G said:

This is the regulator. It’s dual stage. That means there’s one stage for the pressure coming from the tank and one stage for the pressure going to the tank. This prevents “end of tank dump”. A tank gets low and a single stage regulator can dump all the remaining co2 into the tank and kill the fish. This is apparently rare, but it can happen.  The black box is an electronic solenoid switch so the system can be controlled by a timer. The co2 gets switched off at night when the plants are not actively photosynthesizing. The metal bit on the left is two valves to control the flow of co2 into one or two tanks. The glass cylinders are so you can count how many bubbles per min are going into the tank. The tubing is rated to be resistant to co2. 

One of the biggest bits of advice I can give is to force yourself to do the soap test / leak check on everything.  Start from the actual fitting on the CO2 tank itself to make sure there's no leaks there, then your first connection and so on.  I went through an entire 10lb CO2 tank in about 3 days because of how leaky my work was and it's not a lesson I'd wish on anyone.  It took me about 2 years to sort out a basic issue and I thought my regulator was broken because one of the dials was slightly loose. CO2 Art helped me work through the issue and run the tests, I realized I completely screwed up, and everything is up and running again.

I am right there with you.  Having "high tech" versions of CO2 is so easy and so simple to do, but that first step is just a tough one.  I contemplated all of these other setups and even was going to try the ocean aquarium method to get it going.  It's so nice to have once you do get it dialed in and working in your favor.  Here is some hope for both of us, wishing for awesome plant growth in our tanks!

I ran my water tests today, first time 0 nitrates again.

[Mmiller2001]

I will second @gjcarew, and add, hope you have more than one pair!

[Patrick_G]

This is the drop checker. It comes with a bottle of fluid. Put some in the glass checker and put it in the aquarium. If it’s green you’re ok. Blue means you need more co2 and yelllow means too much. 
You can calculate how much co2 is in your tank based on the ratio between you PH and KH. Here’s a good video by George Farmer that describes the process. 
 

 

[Patrick_G]

Bubble counters. Are they all a pain in the rear? 
George farmer recommends about one bubble per second per 13 gallons. So my 75 gallon tank requires roughly 5.8 bubbles per second. That’s pretty much just a stream of uncountable bubbles. I think I need some advice on using the PH drop method. 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Patrick_G

[Mmiller2001]

Bubble counters are useless, they are only good for letting you know that CO2 is flowing through and out to the tank. My bubbles per second are uncountable.

So you have a few options to work with. You will need to get an accurate pH and KH reading or measure the pH from a degassed to gassed state. If you go the pH and KH method, just use a CO2 chart but you will want your calculation to be a bit higher than the chart to account for the acidification from nitrification. 

While looking at this chart, let's assume your pH is 6.6 and KH is 4dKH. You will notice that you are in the red with 30.1ppm CO2. However, that's where you want to be do to to other acid sources. If you were at a pH of 6.7 and 4dKH, I would say you are low on CO2. 

The most accurate way is to measure pH drop. You will take a sample of the tank water and let it sit out for 12 to 24 hours. After, pH that sample and record the pH. Then, once CO2 has been injecting about 2 hours, measure the pH. You are looking for a 1 to 1.5pH drop. My tanks are solid at a 1.2pH drop. If I go higher, I begin seeing signs of stress. You want excellent surface agitation and surface skimming really helps as well. You want to supply as much O2 as possible while gassing off CO2 at a high rate. The better the gas off, the harder you can push CO2 and create a stable curve while injecting. Any time you adjust CO2 up, you must be available to watch the fish. I would check pH every 15 minutes when dialing in my tanks and always on a day off when I could watch the tank. If the KH is stable, you will always know where you are just by taking a pH reading. But a KH that changes will also change the pH readings, so be aware of this possibility. I run 0dKH, there for I always know my 4.9 to 5.1pH is where I need to be.

 

https://www.2hraquarist.com/blogs/choosing-co2-why 

[Patrick_G]

I’ve settled on two drops per second for now. My plants are undemanding and I’m seeing good results. 

The tall leaf in the middle is post co2 growth, the brown speckled one is pre co2. A big difference. 

Narrow leaf Java fern was barely surviving. Now it’s thriving and all the leaves are healthy. 

A different type of narrow leaf fern doing well

Red/greed tiger lotus has produced several babies 

[IanB]

Java ferns are looking great! I don't find them an "easy" category plant at all. I think, along with Bolbitis, they are better classified as a medium difficulty plant, as they are very easy not to kill but without really soft water and/or CO2 it is hard to get them looking amazing. So often, I think plants get categorized by "can they survive without CO2" and "do they need high lighting?". There are a lot of plants that can do well in low energy systems but are not easy to make look great.

Oh and for everyone reading this thread looking to get started with CO2, the one big tip that I haven't seen yet (apologies if I missed it), is to wait 12 hours or, even better, a full day from when you bring your filled CO2 cylinder home and place it near your tank to when you hook it up. It may need hours for the cylinder to get to your exact room temp. If you hook it up before it has gotten to room temp, it will continue drift to room temp after being hooked up and, when metal changes temp, it changes size. So, if you don't let the cylinder come to full room temp before hooking it up, you can easily end up with a loose seal and dumping CO2 into your room pretty fast.

[tolstoy21]

I ran CO2 for few years.  I used both the drop checker and the chart @Mmiller2001 linked in this post to dial things in.

At first I just picked a moderate bubble rate and then watched the tank all day (it's next to my work desk, so keeping an eye on things was easy), and then I just slowly tweaked the bubble rate each day till I had it running at a nice lime green.

One thing I would advise, if I remember correctly, is to switch the solenoid on a few hours before lights on, and to shut it off a few hours before lights out.  This allows the aquarium to have CO2 in the water when the plants are ready to photosynthesize and lets it deplete a bit before they are ready to stop.

Also, is that a 5lb tank? My one regret was not getting a 20lb tank because I got tired of running out to refill it. I was running my setup in a 125 and felt like I was refilling CO2 all the time. I never really measured to see if a 20lb tank would fit under my stand, so not sure one would even fit. However, from a cost perspective, I think I paid $15 to fill the 5lb, whereas a 20lb is like $30 for a refill (so 4x as much gas for only 2x increased cost). 

I also preferred the Sera CO2 reactor to the normal diffuser because I didn't care for the sprite-water  look.

Oh, and your plants look great!!!

Edited August 30, 2022 by tolstoy21

[Patrick_G]

On 8/30/2022 at 2:25 PM, tolstoy21 said:

also preferred the Sera CO2 reactor to the normal diffuser because I didn't care for the sprite-water  look.

I like the diffuser bubbling away, but I could definitely live without the full tank Sprite look. 

[Patrick_G]

On 8/30/2022 at 1:34 PM, IanB said:

Java ferns are looking great! I don't find them an "easy" category plant at all. I think, along with Bolbitis, they are better classified as a medium difficulty plant, as they are very easy not to kill but without really soft water and/or CO2 it is hard to get them looking amazing.

Totally agree, and that’s one reason I’m trying co2. My ferns just never look great and I got some beautiful narrow leaf from a club auction, when it started to wither I decided to go with the co2. 

[tolstoy21]

On 8/30/2022 at 6:19 PM, Patrick_G said:

I like the diffuser bubbling away, but I could definitely live without the full tank Sprite look. 

The reactor works well at dissolving the CO2 so there are no bubbles in the display at all, but its' kind of unsightly if you mount it in the tank (I think it can be mounted externally as well). The one thing I didn't like about it was that every now and then the chamber would fill with more CO2 (over time) than it could dissolve into the water and it needed to be stopped and re-filled with water and restarted.  The reactor is a good option if you have a sump you can hide it in.

Also, if you have a sump, there is a type of impeller (needle-something-or-other) than can be used to help dissolve the CO2 before it hits the display. Haven't used one so I don't know how successful they are.