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CO2 Poll



1)Describe your CO2 setup.

Two Tanks,

Tank A: 20G with DIY Yeast, and a home-made "Barr-like" reactor made out of
a powerhead and an extra riser lift tube. CO2 from bottle feeds powerhead
without bubble counter.

Tank B: 55G with "Gomberg" HP valve, Ehiem diffuser, "Barr-like" reactor
made out of powerhead/extra riser tube. The Ehiem is a PITA and was
constantly needing cleaning so now I basically use it as a bubble counter
and
have the power head that feeds the reactor sitting right above it and really
don't care much about it's diffusing capability.

2)What valve do you use (company name, part number, etc.)?
Tank A: No valve planned.
Tank B: M3 ($19.00) valve on order. Will use as a metering & dump
"protector".

3)How long have you been using this type of setup?
Tank A: DIY Yeast I've been using for about 4 years on one tank or another.
Specifically on this tank less than a year.
Tank B: Moved from DIY to CO2 about 18 months ago.

4)Have you experienced any problems with this setup?
Tank A: Hate making yeast but a batch usually lasts 3-4 weeks. Because the
tank is at work I always run out of sugar or yeast and then forget to pick
it up on the way in. On the other hand, I think Security would be at my
office in a moment if I had a huge "welding" bottle with a bunch of
contraptions connected to it. Additionally, the power-head has recently
started to fill full of air/CO2, shut-off, and rattle dry. Need to figure
out why. Lastly, never killed anything (or anyone) with the DIY.

Tank B: A myriad of problems -
The flow seems to change without being touched. It may be temperature
related but I'm pretty sure that the temp under my tank does not change that
much. Within a month, the Tab on the Ehime broke and I had to buy another
one.

I've had TWO fish kills (both very expensive) with this set-up. The first
was about four months after getting the set-up, the flow changed
significantly (as just described) while I was away during thanksgiving last
year and I came home to a tank of dead Discus (in fairness, it was  a
double fault scenario: I also have an overflow that does allow some
de-gassing and surface cleaning and the water level had evaporated enough
to turn off the overflow, so lots of extra CO2+ no degassing = death).

The second was well discussed on APD as an end-of-tank dump. One other note,
is that the tank had run dry in the past without ill effects (it may have
dumped and I not noticed, but nothing died).

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, hate the Eheim diffuser: It is now a
very expensive bubble counter.

5)If you could change something(s) about your current setup, what would it
be?
Tank A: Need to figure out the power-head losing prime problem
Tank B:  I am in hope that the needle valve will give me much better control
over the reliability and consistency of the system.... We shall see.

6)What cV flow rates do you use?
Tank A: Whatever the DIY produces (about 1  bubble/second after the system
calms down from it's initial start-up of 3 bps)
Tank B: 2-4 bps, enough to maintain (monitored, not controlled) pH of 6.8 -
7.0 @ 4dKH.