Co2 and water agitation

[Roediger]

So i recently increased my co2 to a higher limit. today I had off, and noticed the drop checker turning yellow towards the end. I have been watching some Youtube videos about a guy named dennis Wong and surface agitation.

It pretty much says to push co2 without gasping fish early or late in the day surface agitation should be increased.

now my question is about drop checkers. if i have a lot of surface agitation does my drop checker still turn green or yellow with high co2 injection? Is it a lot harder for the DC to turn color?

i inject 1.30hrs ahead of time and would have hoped to see lime green if not yellow.. instead mine is a dark green but it's green. i would like to see my drop checker at a good rate without having to kill my fish

any comments are appreciated as i would like to get this straight.

thank you.

 

[Edvet]

Agitation is used to degass CO2 fom the tank, that's why some people use is, in the form of an airpump, at lights out. After lights out the plants will start to release CO2 and consume O2. So when surface agitation is used the CO2 will leave the water, The dropchecker will reflect this , though slow, because dropcheckers are slow.
A pH profile would be more precise to time the CO2 period, the total amount of pH drop is dependend on a lot of things, KH/GH being one of them. In my soft water tank i used a pH drop of 1.6. In harder water 0.5 could be enough.

urning yellow towards the end

This means the CO2 isn't optimal when lights go on, but stil increasing.
Have a look at this: https://www.ukaps.org/index.php?page=co2-measurement-using-a-drop-checker

 

[ceg4048]

i inject 1.30hrs ahead of time and would have hoped to see lime green if not yellow.. instead mine is a dark green but it's green. i would like to see my drop checker at a good rate without having to kill my fish

Hello,
This is a clear indication that either your CO2 diffusion method is faulty or that you have poor flow/distribution - or both.

Cheers,

 

[Zeus.]

Hi Roediger.

From the small amount of information you have given I have to agree with 'ceg4048' above.

I have watched D Wongs vids on CO2 and I think they are very good. By the sounds of it, I dont think you have fully understood his explanation of using a higher CO2 injection rate along with increased surface agitation to get the same pH drop to achieve a more stable [CO2] during the photoperiod.

Drop Checkers (DC) are very slow to show the change in the Tanks [CO2], some are worse than others. A pH pen is much better as even a cheap one can monitor the relative change in pH over the photoperiod, plus pre CO2 period and can determine if your CO2 is stable and the relative drop.

 

[Roediger]

I have an inline diffuser from GLA. I made my flow better according to the help i got previously from you guys on flow. My tank is a 29 gal. I re adjusted my spray bar and now the water hits the front of the glass with force! Thanks to ceg4048. The spray bar makes a fine mist which circulates from front to back. Could it be i have too much adjitation? I am about to reset on the weekend and monitor. I would have thought increasing co2 would stable co2 when lights are on. I have dimmed the lights also so tank looks like a low light To help co2 . Plants look alot better. I dose EI according to tank also

Foreground plants are montecarlo and baby tears

What am i missing?

 

[Roediger]

I have another question. If my water flow goes from front to back. Should i position my DC on the back glass. Or it doesnt really matter?

 

[ceg4048]

I have another question. If my water flow goes from front to back. Should i position my DC on the back glass. Or it doesnt really matter?

The spray bar makes a fine mist which circulates from front to back. Could it be i have too much adjitation? I am about to reset on the weekend and monitor. I would have thought increasing co2 would stable co2 when lights are on. I have dimmed the lights also so tank looks like a low light To help co2 . Plants look alot better. I dose EI according to tank also

Hi,
It would help if you were to record pH readings regularly from gas on to lights off, every hour or so. That is really the best way to determine how effective your CO2 strategy is and whether it is efficient. As Zeus mentions, the DC is too slow to give you instantaneous information.

It doesn't really matter where in the tank the DC is located. The best place for a DC is anywhere in the tank that makes it easiest to see the color.

The DC is a guide Neo. It can show you the path.

If you are overzealous with surface agitation, you will off-gas the CO2 in the same way that when you shake a bottle of fizzy drink, the CO2 comes quickly out of solution and sprays out of the bottle. It is better to moderate the agitation. The less agitation you use, the less CO2 you need to inject to achieve your target concentration and the less danger there is to the fish. I do not suggest using an air pump or anything like that to augment agitation. Simply point the spraybars slightly up above the horizontal so that you achieve ripples on the water's surface:

As I mentioned, please take a half dozen or dozen pH readings at regular intervals when you reset your configuration. Adjust your injection rate so that you achieve a drop of 1 pH unit from the gas on time to the lights on time. That should take from 1 to 2 hours. If you are not able to accomplish that then look for pinched or kinked gas line or leaks in the gas line connections. Use soapy water and brush/spray on the connections to check for gas leaks.

Cheers,

 

[Roediger]

do you guys think 2 T5 bulbs over a 12 height tank is a lot of light?

 

[ceg4048]

Yes, it's a lot of light, but if you have enough CO2/nutrients, good flow and proper distribution to support that amount of light then it's OK and the plants grow very quickly.

Here is a copy of Hoppy's chart.

Cheers,

 

[Roediger]

I have been dosing 7 ml of EI every otherday. should i dbl it so no nutrients are missing? I also have the light on for 5 hrs atm since its a strong light

 

[Roediger]

got it to almost match yours lol. tomorrow at work i will line up the holes better as i see they are not totally straight. did notice more flow making plants sway more =)

 

[ceg4048]

I have been dosing 7 ml of EI every otherday. should i dbl it so no nutrients are missing? I also have the light on for 5 hrs atm since its a strong light

Well I'm not really sure what 7ml means in absolute terms because I don't how much of what goes into your mix, or what mix you are using. I also don't know what size the tank is.
If the instruction on the package instructs you to combine the powders in the standard EI amounts for your size tank then I don't think you'll be missing nutrients. You should be OK as long as it is a standard. There ought not to be a need to use double the amounts.

The more swaying of the plants is usually a good sign.

In any case, CO2 is the more critical case. The pictures look good to me. As long as you don't break the surface with splashing then you'll be fine.

Cheers,

 

[Roediger]

Ok saturday is my reset. I will start monitoring co2 thanks alot guys

 

[Roediger]

Sorry ML is milliliter. I dose kno3, kh2po4, and magnesium sulphate. And sometimes i dose k2so4.

 

[Zeus.]

Sorry ML is milliliter. I dose kno3, kh2po4, and magnesium sulphate. And sometimes i dose k2so4.

I'm sure Clive knows what ml is. What he needs to know is size of tank and amounts of ferts your adding ideally with the ppm for the amount of 7ml of LCO to advise if it's enough or too much

Sent from Mountolympus via neural interface

 

[Roediger]

Ah sorry. My tank is a 29 gal, and i mix in 500 ml bottle 4 tsp of pottasium nitrate. 6 tsp of mg sulphate. And 1 tsp of phosphate. On odd days i have a cbm and that mix is 1 tsp in 500 ml and i dose 27 ml of macro and 15 micro

 

[ceg4048]

Hi mate,
OK, well I guess I must be out of touch with the latest in acronyms, and for that I apologize, but I don't know what "cbm" is.

I'm a little confused because in post #10 you mentioned that you add 7ml of macro every other day. I assume that means 3x per week?

Given the mix recipe of 1 teaspoon KH2PO4 and 4 teaspoons KNO3 in 500ml of water, I calculate that this adds about 0.5ppm of PO4, which is OK, but only about 2ppm NO3 per 7ml dose.

But then I'm lost in the sentence regarding "cbm". I'm guessing that might be referring to the trace mix as that would make sense if you're dosing it on odd days. However the last sentence states that you dose 27ml macro? Then that can't be 3X per week (which would be 21ml). 4x per week would be 28ml so I reckon that must be 7ml 4X per week and that 27 is a typo.

In any case, the KNO3 dosing looks a bit low to me as it will only give you less than 7ppm per week so you would need at least double that and more likely 3X that. Of course, it's also possible that your water contains some NO3 as tap water often does, so you might be OK, but I normally start at the target dosing and reduce from there if I can get away with it.

Just to add a little to Zeus's post, we're not trying to bash you or anything like that but EI is just someones's idea. It is not a consistent brand name so the recipes are not the same from person to person or from vendor to vendor.

If we were talking about 7ml of Coca-Cola or 7mg of Bic Mac then that's a different story because Coca-Cola is exactly the same whether in London or in Buenas Aires. The recipe is the same. If I order a Happy Meal in Guangzhou, China it will taste the same as if I ordered it in Moscow. The recipe and ingredients are the same worldwide. But when we talk about EI or other Fertilizer recipes there are no guarantees that what I think is in 7ml is actually what your 7ml contains. So it's always necessary to explain what is in your mix and what size the tank is because those are the numbers used to calculate ppm.

Cheers,

 

[Roediger]

I think i am getting this water movement wrong lol the flow looks good on pic but my drop checker didnt even turn green LOL

 

[Planted Bows]

Means you need to inject more co2. More water movement means more degas of co2 which in turn enables you to get a more balance co2 reading.

I'm currently dialing mine in......takes alot of time lol! Got a new filter coming in the post as want more water movement. Only got a trickle Hob filter atm.

Sent from my G8141 using Tapatalk

 

[Roediger]

hello, i am truly sorry for the confusion. was typing at work so let me start over. macro mix contains 4 tsp of kno3, 1 tsp kh2po4 , 6 magnesium sulphate,
I dose 27ml , 3x a week. my micro mix is 1 tsp of plantex cbm chelated trace. its a 29 gal 30L 12w 18h. Furthermore, I dont think you guys are bashing me, you are just trying to make sense of my bad english typos hehe. you are all helping me alot, and I really do appreciate all the help. even if it's tough love I will accept it. I REALLY! want my tank to be great. I have invested money but more time than anything. no lie, I have been trying to carpet my tank more than a year.

light. my light settings are low atm reason i am saying this is because my anubias has no algae for a couple of weeks after light was dimmed.

only place i seem to be getting algae are on the foreground plants, monte carlo and HC and s.repens




want to know if low light is good for the plants i have.

plants
micranthemum
anubias
Ludwigia repens
java moss
Cryptocoryne Wendtii
Staurogyne repens
Bacopa
Rotala Indica / rotundifolia
hygrophila corymbosa
Alternanthera reineckii

new plants:
Hemianthus callitrichoides
Pogostemon helferi
rotala wallichii