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CO2 management
At 03:48 PM 5/8/99 -0400, Dennis Bednarek noted:
> I would like to make an even better recommendation
>and that is the Whitey SS-31FR4 which has a flow coef of .04 at 10 turns.
>This would
>allow adjustment to a much lower flow coef and allow using a much more stable
>pressure of at least 6 psi.
>Note the B-1RM4 costed $20.50 however I do not remember the quoted price for
>the SS-31FR4 except that it was considerably higher. With the B-1RM4 if I
>were
>scratch building my system I would strongly recommend a low pressure
regulator
>that is accurate in the 1 to 3 Psi range to allow the valve setting to be
>more mid range.
All this underscores the difficulty of building a low pressure system (one
with a foot or two of wc output pressure). The two solutions are to use 2
regulators (I now believe this can be done but it is quite difficult) or to
use a great valve (like the Hoke micrometering valve at over $100). Both
these approaches will work IMHO. What will not work is trying to do it on
the cheap. This (the cheap) refers to the use of a conventional regulator
(0-30psi) with an ARO or Nupro valve. Such systems are unstable and
eventually fail and kill your fish. If you run plants only tanks they
should work fine.
Another CO2 approach that works is to do high pressure regulation and use a
high pressure appliance such as an Eheim sintered glass diffusor. There
are many other makers of such diffusors (Dupla, ADA, Point Four) but Eheim
is the cheapest and seems to work fine. For more details on this approach,
see the page in my sig.
--
Dave Gomberg, San Francisco mailto:gomberg at wcf_com
http://www.wcf.com/co2iron
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