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how many bubbles?

AverageWhiteBloke said:
Although I do appreciate the 30ppm 1 PH drop and unlimited ferts technique and do appreciate it will work for experienced people I find that it does cause issues for a lot of people in the hobby usually within the first three months with an immature tank. I will be setting all my tanks up this way in the future and would advise anybody just starting off to try it. Go low tech and pick plants suited to it, you can always bring other plants in later on. Get a dimmable light and run it on its lowest setting and gradually bring everything up starting with co2, ferts then light in that order. Take your time and I'm talking here over a period of maybe six months rather than a couple of weeks like I see most people do in the algae section of the forum. 90% of us aren't aquascapers anyway so what's the rush. I find doing the unlimited ferts and 1ph drop technique is best done in a very mature mature tank as this technique has its pitfalls so best not to combine them with the setting up a new tank pitfalls. Very easy to get sickened this way especially when you've just forked out the neck end of £500 notes on equipment thinking it will buy one instant success. The hobby should be enjoyable after all otherwise it ceases to be a hobby and turns into a job.
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Solid advice!
 
Thanks ED, I wish I could explain this in a scientific way with some cations and ions involved in it to make me look more knowledgeable than I am but the best I've got is within that first 2 to 3 months I just don't think the plants or setup is "ready" :rolleyes: for getting bombarded with loads of co2, ferts and photons especially when the majority of all that is getting wasted. Perhaps the plants need to establish a good root system first and need to have some hospital time not sure. The majority of new plants that get bought are either tissue culture or just had the roughest 48 hours of their lives. Cut down from where it was happy and put in a freezing cold bag. I reckon they just want to chill for a while before being force fed and made to dance under lights. The slower the transition the better.
 
foxfish said:
Your method is sensible and sound but probably a bit to cautious and slow for the average beginner who wants full on growth from day one!
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Probably why I have enough 2nd hand fishkeeping equipment to start my own shop ;)
 
foxfish said:
Bubble counters are bordering on useless for any tank that requires more than a few bps!
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Been there, thought that - mulled it over many times.... I always arrive at the same solutions though.

Simple: Increase the diameter of the pipe (pointing down in the water of the counter bottle) bigger pipe = bigger bubble at a slower rate. It absolutely must point directly downwards though to hold the bubble long enough to inflate it to an acceptable to be able to then detach and rise.

Complicated/££££: Optical bubble counter. I suppose with Arduino and the clever people that do many things with them, it wouldn't be too hard I suspect? But could you imagine having a digital read out on a bubble counter?! "3.14 BPS" in a nice red phosphorescent colour or something.

Pffff - I wish I knew where to start.
 
There's gel that you can put in bubble counters instead of water I've seen before to slow the whole thing down so you can count high bubble rates. I was once working in a hospital and they were scrapping those things that measure o2 rates. You know the ones with the ball in. Wondered why something like that doesn't get used on co2 gauges.

Keep coming back to the same thing though, doesn't really matter what's leaving the bottle it's more to do with what happens when it leaves the diffuser.

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk
 
foxfish said:
Bubble counters are bordering on useless for any tank that requires more than a few bps!
I think that when someone new to the hobby first looks at thier bubble counter and sees a blurr of uncountable bubble steaming into the system, they just assume thy are adding to much gas!!!!
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I bought a bottle/jar type counter (in this case a JBL Countsafe) instead of the regular one for my EA600. That really made a massive difference.

As a sidenote, and not to offend anyone: I find it somewhat hilarious that between all the test sets, the probes, the discussions on TDS, pH and PAR; we inject a potentially lethal gas into our aquariums. And we ascertain the amount by counting bubbles in a glass pipe. (I am aware that's not the only way, but it still seems so... quaint.)
 
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