New to Aquascaping - Twinstar lights, turn off CO2 when on holiday?

[martins8585]

Hi - new to aquascaping and 1st time using CO2 so apologies for if this is a stupid question.........

I have Twinstar G Line lights and CO2 kit supplied by Aquarium Gardens. (Absolutely amazing customer service!!!!) The Twinstar's have their inline timer / dimer control and the CO2 will be on a smart plug.

Being a bit OCD I'm worried about what would happen if there was a power cut as my understanding is the Twinstar's would just come back on after the power cut and run their 24hr cycle irrespective of what time it is so could be very out of sync with the CO2.

Assuming this is a problem my thoughts were:

1. Simply turn off the CO2 when on holiday

2. Run both the lights and CO2 on smart plugs but then I would lose the sunlight / sunset feature of the lights as I believe they'd just come on and off

I'm leaning towards option 1 for simplicity (and who likes being woken up by the lights going on full blast?? 😂) but I'd be grateful if members could share their experiences / thoughts. (Especially from anyone running Twinstar lights)

Thank you in advance.

 

[ian_m]

Before I built my PLC, which has a holiday timer mode, I just turned everything down when I went away.

I ran my tank over 5 weeks whilst on holday, with lights & CO2 starting 2 hours later and turning off an hour earlier. Basically had 2 T4 tubes on for 4 hours only. Also reduced fertiliser dosing and food dosing to half the amount to make food last.

Plants were not so green and a bit straggly when I got round to maintenance after such a long time, but quickly plants quickly recovered once full light and CO2 was restored.

 

[LMuhlen]

Simplest way would be to get a smart plug for the lights as well and use it only when on holiday. Sunset feature isn't all that important, especially if there is no one there to see it. Lights would simply turn on for ages, before LEDs.
Alternatively, you could use a plug that can be controlled remotely, find a way to know when the lights are turning on and off remotely (could be a smart plug set to only measure power consumption) and then manually delay the CO2 remotely if you notice that the lights are out of sinc.

Simply turning off the CO2 sounds like a bad idea.

 

[Zeus.]

Always tricky when going away and want to do for all the 'what ifs'

I done the same approach as @ian_m in the past which has worked well accepting the plants going a little laggy and straggly as Ian says, bit of maintenance and your soon back on track.

Another option which I didn't use is to put the CO2 on 24/7 on a much lower rate ( obviously test before hand) then if you timer messes up due to power cut the lower its no big deal as light will be in sync with 24/7 CO2 injection.

One tip is no big changes just before you go and too little food is better than too much if you have folk feeding livestock