Co2 Diffuser

[Jesseboy]

I am expecting my pressurized Co2 Kit to arrive tomorrow. It comes with a glass diffuser with ceramic disc. I have an inline home made Diffuser attached to my canister filter...its just a pvc pipe legth with a inlet at the top...Just wondering if anyone can tell me which one would work better?

Cheers

Jesse

[twobunnyrabbit]

Hi,
With the glass diffuser it depends on the size of your tank. If you have a 4x2x2 tank it may not be enough to achieve satisfactory CO2 level. The best option would be to run it into the inlet of your canister filter. Alternatively you can position the glass diffuser below the intake of the canister filter to help it dissolve better (finer bubbles). Each tank is different so you'll need to experiment.

If you have good lighting you can roughly estimate if CO2 is adequate with how much the plants are pearling.

If you have an overflow setup (not recommended for planted tanks) you'll need ALOT more CO2 injected to account for the loss (or a really good CO2 reactor).

Hope this helps.

[Jesseboy]

Cheers...I moved the glass diffuser under the filter intake...still no pearling as yet but i have only just moved it under there...running 3bps in litre tank

[twobunnyrabbit]

What are the specs of your tank and lighting? From memory the recommended lighting is about 2-3watts/gallon. Also, what kind of fertilizer are u using?

[Jesseboy]

oops typo in my last post, tank is about 500 litres. 6foot x 1.5x1.5 i think. I'm using a homemade liquid fertilizer the recipe is off this site somewhere i cant remember exactly whats in it. i think Epsom salts, potassium nitrate, trace elements. and pot ash, from memory, i dose it every morning with about 6ml.

Lightning i got 3 4 foot Tri phospher grow lights...not sure what K rating. also 2 4 foot standard fluro's. all staggered so get a good spread the whole length of the tank

[twobunnyrabbit]

So you have 5x4foot lights which roughly works out to be 5x39W = 195W. Btw are these T8 or T5 lights?

500L ~ 132 US gallon.

So your light is ~ 195/132 = 1.4 watts/gallon.

Your light requirement is probably enough for slow growth (others correct me if i'm wrong) and you wont get fast growth or even pearling.

This is based on my experience with a 4x2x2 and 6x39W T8s (T5 and power compact not that common when I had these a few years ago). I have since upgraded my light to MH.


Hmm getting a bit off topic.

[Jesseboy]

I'm running T8's so i might have to look at upgrading to T5's down the track to increase the growth, I have changed back to my inline Co2 reactor. i got sick of the filter burping out big bubbles of wasted Co2. Now with the inline im getting no bubbles so must be getting close to 100% diffusion.