# Pressurised CO2 and Liquid carbon



## 5678 (7 Jul 2015)

I see a few people mention using both of these together, but then little in the way of people asking about the benefits. 

Is it worth me using liquid carbon along with my pressurised system?


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## Jose (7 Jul 2015)

5678 said:


> Is it worth me using liquid carbon along with my pressurised system?


It depends. How do your plants look? How happy are you with their growth? Algae? Any CO2 defficiencies? 
Most people add liquid carbon on top of the gas to get rid of algae specially BBA.


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## 5678 (7 Jul 2015)

Plants have been struggling, but I think this is more down to iron deficiency. 

I might try dosing it at the weekend when I'm around to keep an eye on my fish.


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## tubamanandy (11 Jul 2015)

I've got a stable CO2 setup but struggling with BBA, I started adding Liquid Carbon about a week ago and guess what its all starting to go !

Question is, Why ???   Thought my CO2 would have been providing easily enough carbon into my water


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## xim (12 Jul 2015)

tubamanandy said:


> I've got a stable CO2 setup but struggling with BBA, I started adding Liquid Carbon about a week ago and guess what its all starting to go !
> 
> Question is, Why ???   Thought my CO2 would have been providing easily enough carbon into my water



Liquid carbon's main use in this hobby is to kill algae. It's an algaecide with a side effect of providing carbon.

BBA, like other algae, is not solely from not having enough CO2. Some people had elevated level of CO2 that 
their fish didn't survived but the algae (including BBA) still happily lived along.


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## Jose (12 Jul 2015)

BBA can be fixed by adding more co2 which indicates that its just a co2 issue. If you are gassing your fish and still get BBa then its just means you havent got enough co2 or its not making it to your plants as it should. Co2 concentration in water is not the only factor. Adding co2 in the form of microbubbles adds more available co2 to the plants whilst not adding too much as to gas your fish. Look at ADA tanks. Fish are happy and tanks are healthy. Co2 mist isthe way to go if you have Bba. Light is also a biggie.


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## 5678 (12 Jul 2015)

Jose, when you say most you mean via an in tank diffuser? 

I am on the verge of buying one to try as I am not convinced that I am getting co2 into my system as I should with an inline.


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## Jose (12 Jul 2015)

Well lets see. Both methods work, inline and intank. With inline you will be dissolving more co2 in the water, thus making it more risky for fish if you dont have good outgassing, i.e. good surface ripple. On the other hand via in tank difusser co2 is dissolved to a lesser ammount but co2 still can make it to thd plants  in small co2 bubbles. So you can do two things:
1) Up your surface ripple a bit so that fish can bare with the co2 in the water. Some fine tunning to do here.
2) Buy an in tank atomizer. You should see fine bubbles reaching most plants. You can keep surface ripple quite low this way but always finding a balance. This method is safer but same can be done with both.

Also you will see that every one will recommend you what works for them since there are no facts here. Well very few anyway.


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