[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: CO2 rates and biowheels



Sorry stupid Yahoo makes the enter key the default for
send so I sent this once without a reply. There are
going to be a lot of people telling you to remove the
biowheel, or that you will lose tons of CO2 via the
biowheel. According to Dr. Hovanec (Marineland's head
of research and a well known figure in the field), the
biowheel (if properly used, in other words if the tank
water level is kept appropriately high) will
absolutely not produce enough energy to liberate a
signifigant amount of CO2. When properly running there
should be very little "splashing", especially in an
eclipse hood where the wheel is driven by the movement
of water under the wheel as opposed to the Emperor
which employs a spray bar (that one would probably
cause a signifigant loss of CO2). People tend to
erroneously conclude that the wheel is splashing and
adding a lot of oxygen to the water, but this is not
the case (once the wheel becomes well seeded and
soaked). IN fact the purpose of the wheel is to keep a
large substrate for bacteria that is *nearly* exposed
to room air (only a thin layer of water is on it as
opposed to a whole tank full of water). THis allows
the filter bed to take on atmospheric gas more readily
(via the mebrane of water not via adding O2 or driving
out CO2) thus preventing the filter bed from competing
with tank inhabitants for 02. Will there be some CO2
lost? Yes. I would love to hear of a test of this as I
could be wrong and I could have been lied to by the
EVil MArineland Empire (as all of the eheim fanatics
on here will tell you ;-p <====it was a joke so don't
get your undergarments in a wad). If you have (or
someone out there) has a CO2 set up running and has a
CO2 test kit, please confirm what it does with and
without the biowheel. I would like to see some real
data on it. 



Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 22:26:13 -0500
From: Brown_D at pcfnotes1_wustl.edu
Subject: CO2 rates and biowheels

The CO2 is up and running (thanks, Dave).  Dave
suggests an initial CO2
injection rate of about 1 bubble per second per 50
gallons of tank 
volume.
Can any of you who use a similar system with Eclipse
hoods and 
biowheels
suggest by how much I should anticipate increasing
that to compensate 
for
the CO2 blown off by the biowheel?  I just need
something to occupy 
myself
in between fiddling with the needle valves, doing pH
checks and 
monitoring
for pearling (none yet but I'm starting slowly...).


Diane Brown



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Shopping - Mother's Day is May 12th!
http://shopping.yahoo.com