Hi all,
I actually cut the surface agitation down loads after watching
Do people agree with what is in the video
I haven't listened to all of it, but I think he is talking sense. One thing with the video is that all the tanks have a reasonable plant mass and the fish look really healthy (although they are a bit fat). He actually has quite a lot of water movement, even though he doesn't have much surface agitation.
Some surface agitation definitely reduces surface scum.
Linear flow works really well for gas exchange, anything that increases the gas exchange surface works. I have both linear flow and surface agitation, but I have a huge plant mass, so I never get the "washing machine" effect.
I know I read somewhere that co2 will get to a certain level and more surface agitation won't change it.I get oxygen is critical but is there a point when more agitation won't necessarily mean more oxygen?
The more water turn-over you have the closer you will get to equilibrium values with the atmosphere, for CO2 that is about 0.5ppm when atmospheric CO2 levels are at 400ppm (at 1013mb pressure and 27oC).
We had the gas system (for bunsen burners etc) in the lab. upgraded in the summer and we now have a CO2 sensor fitted to an automatic valve shut-off system. It usually records about 600ppm CO2, although when the lab. is busy it rapidly gets to 1500ppm (at which point you would have an equilibrium value nearer to 1.5ppm).
During the photo-period the water may become saturated with oxygen, and then pearling occurs. The best option for looking at levels of oxygen during a diurnal cycle would be to look at pH, which will change as the CO2/O2 ratio changes. It won't give you an absolute measure of dissolved oxygen, or be applicable to another tank (too many variables, dKH, tank architecture etc), but you could measure pH with different flow patterns and see what happens.
This was done in this thread <"
Maxing CO2 in low tech....">
cheers Darrel