# Few Questions



## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

When dosing co2 do most of you turn it off at night? I dont and have never suffered ill effects myself. I was just wondering since I had read around that it's not advisable to run the co2 while the tank is dark.

I read that caking agents and whatnot in POtassium Chloride based slts like No Salt and Mortons Salt Sunstitute arent bad because theya re in such minute amounts. Would it be safe to dose the potassium in a fish tank? I do in my culture tank that has no livestock with no problems but...

This week I didnt dose Nitrates ina ccordance with EI, I kow i know i tested and they looked high but i did dose the fleet and the traces and within 3 days i had greenwater. does it sound like that and my 12 hour light schedule caused my greenwater outbreak?

you know i run it ten hours after this blackout from now on. 12 noon to 10 pm cause i work till 6 or so and would like to see the tank at somepoint you know? once i get out of the blackout i was gonna go back to co2 on my powerhead and place it right by my fluval output because routing it through the fluval was just bringing my ppm of co2 way too high like 79. how does one control DIY co2? it seems better to go with the paintball version than to go DIY based on control, much cheaper than full on pressurized systems locally and online and again the control is much better.

pressurized systems are just far too expensive for me. buying used online equals new local with heavy weight shipping. and that goes for the online new versions that sell for what people want for their old stuff.

rant over. i'm just saying i'm stuck with diy for now. 
ian


----------



## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

Ian,

Let me see if I can address some of the issues you bring up here.



> When dosing co2 do most of you turn it off at night?


 I run pressurized on all 4 of my tanks and 3 of them are on 24/7 with no problems. My pH doesn't vary by more than about 0.2 units from dark to light.

You shouldn't use any chloride based salts in your tanks. Use potassium sulfate (K2SO4) for your source of potassium, not KCl (potassium chloride).



> This week I didnt dose Nitrates ina ccordance with EI,


 Huh?? Part of EI is dosing everything weekly so there is an excess of everything there. You probably ran short/out of nitrates and induced your gw. I don't think a 12 hour lighting period is a problem. I run mine for 10hours from 1PM - 11PM, so I can enjoy the tank when I come home from work.

IMO, you can't really control diy CO2 other than by cutting down or adding more yeast/sugar bottles. I am surprised you hit 79ppm in your tank with diy. I had it in a 29 when I first started out (2 bottles) and it never got above around 20-25ppm. I used to inject into an ac filter. I have no experience with paintball systems.

HTH.


----------



## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

Thanks that answers alot actually.

You know I even let the DIY sit for 24 hours. Usually I get 30ppm using a powerheads venturi, i just laze it in there and it sucks the bubbles down but putting it in the fluvals intake just... i mean there were trillions of bubbles, and i was getting a burp every 7- 10 minutes.

i checked the ph when i got home and it was almost completely yelllow, llike right on six and my oto was floating about, then he'd swim a little, then float. it was really weird. It's the only thing i changed unless adding the fluval caused ammonia or nitrite, but at that ph it shouldnt be as toxic and everyone else was fine. besides the tank is established bacteria so....


----------



## stcyrwm (Apr 20, 2005)

urville said:


> When dosing co2 do most of you turn it off at night? I dont and have never suffered ill effects myself. I was just wondering since I had read around that it's not advisable to run the co2 while the tank is dark.
> ian


If you are doing EI then CO2 needs to be over 30 ppm consistently. Only way to do that with DIY CO2 is to overshoot into levels that get dangerously high at night. Pressurized CO2 you can turn off. DIY you can't. So you have 2 options. First if you feed CO2 into powerhead diffuser, you can time that to turn off at night and then CO2 just bubbles out. Other option is to have air pump on timer to kick on at night. You could also do both.

Bill


----------



## Simpte 27 (Jul 16, 2004)

I found (as I don't use DIY anymore), that your diffusion method will determine your yeast mixture as thats the only thing you can control with this method. With a good diffusion method, you can tailor your mixture to produce less but longer as it will be more efficient than using an airstone for diffusion. With a poor reactor/diffuser you need more kick which results in more bottles and or more changing of the mixture. I ran my DIY 24/7 as there is really no way to stop it. With my pressurised system, it goes off 1/2 hr after the lights and comes on 1/2 hr before them. A simple timer is used to accomplish this. It keeps my PH/KH steady around 7.0/10 with a variance of approx 0.2. 

Nitrate test kits are unreliable IME (not as bad as iron but still not very accurate). I let the plants tell me whats going on. My biggest problem is running low on NO3 as I dose a lot of PO4. I really don't see how one can overdose either nutrient short of dumping a whole bottle of each in. With E.I. my measurements are far from accurate. I think its better to have too much than too little as a waterchange will remove excess.

If planted tanks are something you want to pursue for any period of time, purchase one piece at a time. Just keep looking for your regulator/solenoid combo. They go on sale from time to time and aquabid usually has a few for sale from other users. CO2 tanks are generall cheaper from welding supply stores and they sell used ones. The one in my area will take old fire extinguishers and refit them and test them for cheaper than buying new.


----------



## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

how do you do that then? you just have the reactor on a timer or your solenoid?
i see what your saying. but you could kill fish if you ovrdosed No3.. and mine was nearing 15ppm. if the test is inaccurate other than calibrating it say, how do you ever know whether your in danger of killing your fish from stress of the added nutrients? i mean its a best guess really then, and that seems a little iffy. how am i suppose to figure my dosing agaisnt my bioload. these are the things that there seems to be no instructions on. i mean dont get me worng it's obviously working for you, but... a little risky.

ian


----------



## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

I wouldn't worry too much about od'ing on NO3, or any other nutrient for that matter. If you follow EI, the math will show you that the most that will build up is twice what you add weekly. In other words, if you're adding 20ppm of NO3 to your tank during the week, and you do weekly 50% water changes, the most NO3 you will ever have in there is 40ppm - and that is only if the plants don't consume any of it. 40ppm won't kill anything. I made a couple of dosing mistakes and had my NO3 up around 50ppm and didn't suffer any losses. 

The same is true for all the nutrients you add to your system.

Here's my routine after my water changes, I add 5ppm NO3, and 2ppm PO4 along with some K and Mg. Mid week I add another 5ppm NO3, and 1ppm PO4 with more Mg. The rest of the days I add micros. I have a lot of guppies and an sae in each tank which are fed daily. A lot of folks might say that's a lof of PO4. I don't have a problem with it, and my anubias leaves which some are over a year old, have no algae on them. One tank has some issues with a little claudophora, but that can't be controlled with nutrients.

Prepare a std solution of NO3, say 10 ppm. Use it on your test kit to calibrate it. Use that as a rough reference to convince yourself that your tank won't od on nitrate over time. EI really does work, and it's the easiest thing out there.

Sorry for the long post, but hope it helps.


----------



## Simpte 27 (Jul 16, 2004)

I dose more No3 and PO4 than that with no algae to show for it. E.I. works great! As for my CO2, I plug the solenoid into a timer. Cheap, easy, and very effective.


----------



## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

see i think it must have been the lack of no3 that caused my problem then.
possibly also the fact that i only dose what potassium is in the kno3. i''ve always been below the reccomended.

so you guys purposely dose way higher than needed, not just a bit?
Cause i'm doing so that i hit about 7.9 ppm kno3, .77 po4, and .36 iron in csm+b. the kno3 is giving me about 4 ppm

out of curiosity, what is it about h202, just that it's an antispetic? doesnt take much only 4 ml per my 29 gal


----------



## plantbrain (Jan 23, 2004)

U-
See the DIY CO2 venturi diffuser I suggest for folks on my site, that can be plugged into the light timer, this will ramp up CO2 very well for the DIY yeast method.

There is no better way to add CO2 to your tank using DIY.

The venturi loop increases plant growth considerably.
Cost 2-3$.

Regards, 
Tom Barr

www.BarrReport.com


----------



## urville (Sep 20, 2004)

I'll have to wait till I get some more $ in my payapl. i'm not yet a subscriber to the barr report.


----------

