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Eheim diffusor clogging
For a very long time I had assumed that all Eheim diffusor "clogging" was
due to algae and devised a way to clean the sintered glass disk which
method is described on http://www.wcf.com/co2iron/faq.html
More recently a user told me he had big bubbles (which he associated with
"clogging") but no green stain on the disk. I thought about this way way
too long, and finally realized (1) what is going on and (2) why I never see it.
(1) What is going on? If you have a lot of calcium cations in your water
(usually from contact between the water and a relatively soluble calcium
salt) (this is called hard water) and you now bubble CO2 thru it, the CO2
dissolves in the water, disassociates, and the carbonate anions react with
the calcium producing calcium carbonate, which is white. This is a pretty
fast and complete reaction. The result is the deposition of a white crust
on the disk (almost invisible). The fix is to dissolve the crust off with
a strong acid, this procedure is now described on the web page cited above.
(2) Why I never see it? I have very soft water.
Next case.....
--
Dave Gomberg, San Francisco gomberg at wcf dot com
NEW Planted Aquaria Magazine: http://www.wcf.com/pam
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