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Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V4 #877
At 03:48 AM 3/3/01 -0500, Trey in Tulsa asked:
>I have a Gomberg type CO2 diffuser located about 3" below and
>1" to the right of the magnum intake.
I don't know what a "Gomberg type" diffuser is, but I am assuming this
means an Eheim sintered-glass diffusor.
> the CO2 in my tank is 5ppm
That's pretty low.
> How can I increase the CO2 if the little diffuser is filling with gas.
The diffusor filling with gas does not affect its efficiency at all, but it
does mean you can't count bubbles to determine injection rate (CO2
flow). Either your flow is VERY low or one of your test kits is wrong or
you are blowing the CO2 off. With two filters I would more likely believe
the latter. Try turning off the filters for a couple of hours (not
longer) and see if the CO2 rises dramatically (lower pH, test every
30'). If it does, you need to reduce the agitation of the surface water
caused by the filtered water re-entering the tank. If it does
not, refill the body of the Eheim with water and count your bubble
rate. If it is 3-6 bubbles per second, that should be fine. If it is a
lot less, crank it up some. If it is more, I am guessing it is your test
kit. Put some aquarium water in a soft-drink bottle (1/4 full), test the
pH, shake the water vigorously (with the cap on), test pH again. If the pH
drops a lot, you have plenty of CO2, something else is wrong. If the pH
doesn't drop at all, either you have next to no CO2 or the kit is ng. HTH.
--
Dave Gomberg, San Francisco mailto:gomberg at wcf_com
NEW Planted Aquaria Magazine: http://www.wcf.com/pam
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