Re: CO2 Setup -- or - Doing, Gluing and Bluing

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

DoctorNor at netscape_net said, in part:

> Has anyone used the two gauge Milwaukee regulator? 

NO.  But I've used some really cheap regulators and some
moderately expensive ones and the difference is negligible
for aquatic gardening purposes.  Go ahead and do it.  It's
hard to go wrong with a regulator that is working at all. 
the biggest differences are how smoothly the adjuster turns
-- rememeber, once your system is set up, you aren't going
to be adjusting the regulator much.


> And if
> so how do you like them so far? Also, has anyone used the
> Kare's unit, and is the glass type atomizer a good
> disperal for the CO2? 

Fine bubble airstones, glass atomizers, etc. are fine for
most situations -- CO2 is cheap most places so it's not
necessary to get 1005 absorbtion ofthe CO2.  The difference
in CO2 levels in your tank will be affected as much or more
by other factors such as the amount of turbulence in your
overflow for your sujp set up, whether your tank is open
top or not, and other things that re shedding CO2 from the
water.  If you want 100% absortion or you wnat to get the
CO2 equipment out of the aquarium, you can't beat an
external reactor.  They are easy and cheap to build out of
a few plastic plumbing parts that you glue together.  You
can get fancier and use acrylic, but pvc works fine.  You
can buy them ready-made.  Tom Barr (sometimes?) sells some
very nice, simple, elagantly designed units for a good
price.  You can run external reactors off a Tee-bypass from
your filter output.  Also very effective and very very
inexpensive is to just bubble the CO2 into a canister
filter intake or release it into a covered wet/dry drip
chamber (which is basically an external gas-exchange
reactor).


>And is the CO2 safe air line
> actually worth the money? 

I've never seen an actual test results *and* a description
of the test along with them.  So I kind of think not -- at
least, not for low-pressure situations we use on plnated
tanks.  But after what you spent to get everything else set
up (haven't added it up yet? better sit down), and
assumming you're only running a few feet of tubing, why not
splurge and spend the extra $10 and get the keen blue or
green tubing?  If you like black tubing, which is less
conspicuous in many situations, you can get it here and
other places:

http://www.aquabotanic.com/shop/en-us/dept_16.html

Good luck,
Scott H.


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com