CO2 Valves

[diymechanicalguy]

Hello - I am new to this forum. I've had a small aquarium for awhile, but am upgrading it to a larger one for more fish/plants. I will be having a CO2 line and have a few questions on valves. Are most people using solenoid valves on timers?

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

Hello mate, yeah pretty much if using pressurised co2 from canisters. Most aquarium based regulators these days will come with a built in solenoid. One thing you'll find when dealing with co2 is plants like stability and at the right time so setting things up with a timer keep it that way and once you've dialled in your settings you can forget about it until you see some problems. As the tank "grows in" you may need to make some adjustments.

 

[Edvet]

If you go the CO2 way there are generaly 2 ways.
1) low dose 24/7 CO2 in combination with low light
2) perfectly dissolving and distribution the correct amount of CO2 with medium/high light
1) you can do with any CO2 regulator
2) usually uses solenoid valves on a timer to start the high levels CO2 before lights go on and shut of just before light out in order to make sure nighttime levels of CO2 aren't deadly for the fish.

 

[Zeus.]

Or with a big tank twin solenoids/needle valves. Both on for pH drop then when pH/[CO2] at target one solenoid valve switches off and the lower CO2 injection rate maintains a steady pH/[CO2]. Which is what I use on my 500l tank

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

Hello - I am new to this forum. I've had a small aquarium for awhile, but am upgrading it to a larger one for more fish/plants. I will be having a CO2 line and have a few questions on valves. Are most people using solenoid valves on timers?

I think that's @Zeus. way of saying yes it helps mate.

 

[Matt @ ScapeEasy]

How would you go about calculating a low dose level for 24hrs?

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

How would you go about calculating a low dose level for 24hrs?

How you planning on going about this mate would be the question. Using a drop checker can you give you an idea of the amount of co2 in the water but the fish will tell you first if there's too much. I think you need to have a read up and decide which equipment you are going to be using and the lighting you intend to use. There are various ways of putting some co2 into your water but it really depends on why you want to. A lot will come down to the lighting.

If you just want a long term planted scape with plants that you can get away without co2 but just fancy a boost it may just be a case of of knocking up a diy system and keep the brightness of the lighting down. If you want to go down the route of fast plant growth and high lighting you really need to be investing in some decent equipment like regulators with solenoids on times. Have a read through <this post> you can see various ways of adding some co2 to your water to improve plant growth. However, if you fancy going for it and throwing loads of light over the plants these techniques have their pit falls. The more light you use the less margin for error you have. Plants don't need co2 at night only when the lights come on. The technique used in this situation requires you to be on point with the co2 and distribution of it round the tanks which involves having as much control over it as you can. This is where decent regulators, timers and needle valves come in. You need to be able to switch it on and off when required and control the amount of co2 that goes in regularly on a daily basis. Just adding co2 isn't the answer, it needs added properly and consistently but again I can't emphasise enough about how this is all driven by the type of lighting you use.

If I were you, while investigating this branch of aquascaping, I would keep the lighting low and read through the low tech part of the forum, find plants that do well in this kind of setup and get some growing. Look how to crank things up later and do it gradually, you can always swap plants out later on and most scapes are a work in progress. Lot of people think they need co2 in their lives and spend big bucks on equipment without understanding how to use it and why then run into catastrophes which takes a lot of the enjoyment out of the hobby. You should be spending your time gazing into your wonderful creation rather than staring at a mess and fretting over what to do next.

 

[Matt @ ScapeEasy]

Lot of people think they need co2 in their lives and spend big bucks on equipment without understanding how to use it and why then run into catastrophes which takes a lot of the enjoyment out of the hobby. You should be spending your time gazing into your wonderful creation rather than staring at a mess and fretting over what to do next.

I'm so glad you said this... I actually couldn't agree more.

See www.ScapeEasy.co.uk for more info.

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

It's all about your goals really Matt. You see this hobby is frequented by very different people for different reasons. Me personally I'm more of a long term tank keeper where the fish are the priority albeit I like the background they live in to be as alluring as the fish themselves. On the other end of the spectrum there are aquascapers here that build and strip two or three (maybe more) scapes a year, photograph them and enter them into competitions where the fish take more of a back seat. Both principles apply to plant growth as all the plants have the same requirements. I can wait six months maybe even longer if needs be to grow out a tank because that tank will be running a number of years but on the other hand if I needed a tank ready for October I would go about it a different way forcing maximum growth and all the consequences that come with walking that fine line.

It's all about what the owner actually wants at the end of the day and although many aspects of keeping plants will crossover there's no real one-size-fitsall advice anyone can give. In the case of aquasacping most people will use the Eutrophic technique of unlimited ferts (E.I) and 30ppm co2 at lights on seen as enough co2 but borderline killing your fish. The thread I linked earlier is more marrying up the ferts and co2 to light requirements and the owner realised a little co2 boost improved overall plant health-which it will. My current tank is similar to that, I add a little co2 because I have the equipment to do so already and the lighting above it is borderline needing a co2 boost when ran at 100%.

Don't get me wrong, I've ran many higher energy tanks before which needed the co2 to be on point and will again but right now I don't have the time or inclination. I guess it's all about what you want and to answer your original question, upgrading to a bigger tank makes no difference. The key is the lighting, everything needs matched to that. In the case of high lighting then solenoids etc is the way to go because you need a high level of control. If you don't bother with the high lighting or at least dim it down you have far more options, not running co2 being one of them like many of the splendid low tech tanks we have in here or just giving a little boost like the thread I posted earlier. In the case of the thread I posted it would be quite difficult to harm your fish. Co2 is quite difficult to get dissolved into warm water so adding a little into the tank and letting it soak up will be beneficial to plants without the risks unlike high tech stuff where you have to force this to happen.

 

[Matt @ ScapeEasy]

What I'm trying to do with that site is to encourage more people to enter the hobby and have early success and I believe most new aquascapers will progress to co2 (if they want to, like you say) once that early success has been realised.

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

For sure, this hobby can be as complicated as you want it to be. I get more satisfaction from the "simpler" tanks I do purely because I spend more time looking at them than working on them.

 

[diymechanicalguy]

From the perspective of getting a solenoid valve on a timer (once dialed in for the correct amount/time) is the timer usually "on for X amount of time" and you still have to manually do this or are there more sophisticated ones for like "start at 8am and off at 9am".
I am thinking of getting one of these from Tameson: https://tameson.co.uk/applications/aquarium/

 

[Edvet]

Just hook it up to any timer.

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

rom the perspective of getting a solenoid valve on a timer (once dialed in for the correct amount/time) is the timer usually "on for X amount of time" and you still have to manually do this or are there more sophisticated ones for like "start at 8am and off at 9am".

Do you already have a regulator set? If not you want the complete setup, our sponsors like co2 art, co2 supermarket and aquaessentials do full setups. TBH I'm quite shocked at the prices these days Hinterfield are sub £100 and I was looking at full sets the other day on Ebay for around £40. You pay your money and take your chance I guess. You can't hook solenoid valves up to DIY systems as the bottle will just increase pressure until it explodes when knocked off. If you want a full set the ones with DIN477 thread are the ones that fit fire extinguishers and pub bottles etc in the UK which can make getting fresh gas easier.

Essentially all the solenoid does is knock the gas on/off so when connected to a timer like ED just showed you set them up for 2/3 hours before light comes on to be on and knock off 2/3 hours before lights off. What you need to do is set the bubble rate on the needle valve so that by lights on your drop checker solution is green. Once set you can just leave it to run on the timers.