Re: CO2 rates and biowheels

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

Diane asked:
 
> 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...).
> 
My experience has been that I had to inject at two to three times the
rate when using biowheels.  The difference in the ranges was due to
different setups and tank sizes.   But this is using separate biowheel
devices that use a spray bar (Emperor style), not the smaller integral
ones in the Eclipse hoods that only use an underflow to drive the wheel
(Penguin style).  I suspect that the lower turbulence of that (Penguin)
design might have a milder impact.  It will depend probably, also, on
the water level in the tank; the longer the drop from the biowheel to
the water surface, the greater the turbulence.

Some have recently (not to mention in the past) voiced doubts about the
biowheel's efficacy.  So, if you want to conserve CO2, you might think
about taking the wheel out of the Eclipse.

Scott H.

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