Couple Of Questions About Pressurized Co2

[Amunet]

There there waterdrop *pats back* There there.... lol

Well, took forever to catch the fish, drain the water and get the sand out. Freakin pain in the butt catching the fish. Poor things were SO stressed out, and are so stressed out in the storage bin.
Have had 1 casuality so far... hopefully the only one.
One of the rainbows tryed to make a run for it while no one was looking. Didn't spot it on the carpet until it was too late
The killifish tryed to jump for terrible terrible freedom as well. Almost got out. Boy, when people say that those fish can jump, they are not lying.
Only filled the storage bin w/ them in it half way, so there's a good... 10 or so inches from the top of it, and the rainbow got out, and the killifish almost did O_O

Feel so bad about the dead one, and feel worse that I can't put the fish back in yet.
Waiting for the water to clear up... guess we didn't clean the dirt good enough.. oops..
So yeah, having to wait so I can actually see where I'm putting everything. Will plant the big rooted stuff after I place the wood and things where I want. And hopefully by then, the water temp will be back up, and then, time to put the fish back in.
I just hope there won't be an ammonia spike or anything. I don't see why there would be, but ya never know.

I probably should've used the last few days to determine where I wanted to plant everything, but.. nope lol

 

[waterdrop]

Well if it makes you feel any better, we lost a zebra who clearly decided it was so awful being fed by the neighbor kid that it was time to jump, lol. Holiday weekends are just a terrible time to be a fish obviously, memorials to past war heros not withstanding...

Losing a rainbow is worse than a zebra though, so feel for your loss. At least its obvious you feel the replacement tank is a go however and by now you're probably in the final stages. My what a long way we've come from CO2 technicalities in this soap opera!

~~waterdrop~~
ps. wait a minute! I never got my photo of the character at the co2 filling station....

 

[Amunet]

Lol... I would take a photo, but hubby goes by himself. The place isn't open on weekends, and closes at 5pm. Hubby gets off work at 4pm, so no time to come pick me up unfortunately before the place closes



Anywho update... had a bit of an incident earlier w/ a clown loach getting stuck inside of the castle ornament. I could only reach its tail with tweezers, and the sucker was not budging.
So I had to chisel my way to it, broke off one of the towers on the castle to get to it. Think I may have smacked it in the head w/ the broken off piece. It was still breathing though. I know I shredded its tail a little bit. I just hope it's gonna be ok.

Haven't put the castle back in yet. Going to silicone all of the little holes so something like that doesn't happen again.

Haven't replanted the tank yet. Too tired after that and catching the rest of the fish. Frakin danios and rainbows are fast little suckers! And awesome jumpers. I was putting the fish in to a bucket and then pouring the bucket in to the tank.
I was pouring a bucket in to the tank and all of a sudden, one of the danios took flight. I was on 1 side of the tank, and it flew and splashed in to the water on the other side of the tank. lol... just glad I had left the hood open

I thought aquariums were supposed to be soothing. I swear I'm going to have a heartattack worrying so much!

 

[waterdrop]

Do they sell tiny jack-hammers for breaking apart underwater castles?

 

[Amunet]

Lol... they should, they should... heh

Update on the clown
Good news to report. It looks like he's ok.
Went to feed the tank. Noticed the rest of the loaches swimming around but not that one so got worried.
As soon as I put some food in the tank, it appeared.
Tailfin is a bit raggedy as I expected it to be, but other than that, it looked fine and was eagerly munching on the food. WHEW!

If it's not 1 thing to worry about, it's something else!

 

[Grakk]

Don't know if it's been mentioned, but you can get compressed CO2 refills at places like Praxair and Air Liquide that have a public sales office. These places supply many other industrial gases, but sometimes they will sell to the public in their walk-in office. In my experience they are much cheaper (and more accomodating to regular Joes) than specialty stores or restaurant supply stores. They also don't require you to have an account with them, proof you own a restaurant, etc.

 

[Amunet]

Thanks for that Grakk
May look those places up later if I remember to heh.
I'm sure others really appreciate any info they can get on where to get CO2 refilled.


Anywho.. just replanted the tank.. woot Posted some photos in my plant journal. Water is cloudy though so can't really see much.
Erm.. and yep... CO2 is going steady so far. Had to adjust the needle valve b/c it wasn't when I woke up *grumble* It would be like 3 bubbles quickly, then stop... 3 seconds later, 3 bubbles quickly, stop.... 1 second later, 2 bubbles, and yeah.. just not good.

 

[Grakk]

Do you have a backflow guard on your CO2 line? You might be getting a little pulsing in the line.

If CO2 bubble rate is still unsteady, you might have the diaphragm valve open too far. The needle should only be used to regulate beyond what you can achieve with the diaphragm. Here is how I set mine:

1) open the needle valve 100%
2) close the diaphragm valve all the way until the low-side regulator reads 0 (all pressure relieved on low side)
3) crack the diaphragm valve to the smallest flow you can get that's in the ballpark of what you want. You want bubbles coming out faster than you'd like, but no faster than 2-3x your target rate. You should get no more than the slightest pressure reading (if any) at any time on the low-side regulator. If you do, the diaphragm is open too wide.
4) crank down the needle valve until you hit your target bubble rate.

In my experience, an unsteady bubble rate is a result of having too much pressure on the needle valve. This is especially important if you ever decide to go to pH regulated CO2. If your low-side pressure is too high, you can damage the solenoid cut-off.

 

[Amunet]

Thanks for that... I'll have to get hubby to take a look at it. He's been the one mainly messing with it, so he'd know what to do... hopefully

 

[waterdrop]

Just had lots of fun looking at all the pictures in your journal! Kind of fun knowing that the big tank disaster was going to come and then finally seeing the bacterial bloom in the replacement!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Amunet]

Just had lots of fun looking at all the pictures in your journal! Kind of fun knowing that the big tank disaster was going to come and then finally seeing the bacterial bloom in the replacement!

~~waterdrop~~

It's weird looking back at older photos, b/c you can see where the crack started. *shrugs*
Oh well.. I just hope we won't have that problem w/ this tank *crosses fingers, toes, eyes*

 

[waterdrop]

After ours broke I instituted a whole new set of procedures for myself. I more carefully leveled the tank and stand using a carpenters level and sticking vinyl flooring tiles in strategic places to the bottom board of the wooden cabinet. I then cut out a piece of heavy-mil black plastic just a tiny bit larger than the tank bottom footprint and fixed that to the top board of the stand. Its not hardly visible as the stand and tank floating base are both black but I feel its an extra guard against stray drops of water soaking into the top board (our breakage was due to a small amount of water seeping into a counter-sunk hole where a bolt went to attach a support leg of the stand. The counter-sunk hole exposed the particle board and when the water hit the particle board the wood material swelled up into a bump, raising that corner of the floating base and causing a line-crack in the tank bottom glass to radiate from that corner, confusingly dumping water into the area under the bottom glass and making the tank appear to be leaking despite no visible problem on the evening when it happened.) I now am very fastidious about cleaning up stray water drops whenever I work with the tank. I keep my tank towel handy and use it frequently.

Of course I can't tell you all the words I've uttered, thinking about an aquarium cabinet being made out of particle board and wistfully remembering the sturdy black angle and wrought iron stands of the many tanks in my youth. But there are trade-offs to everything. We may have had sturdy stands and Metaframe stainless steel frames and flagstone tank bottoms back in those days, but we had awful black "goop" to seal the glass, unlike the fabulous clear and strong silicone sealers of today and the beauty of hiding all that unsightly gear in a nice furniture cabinet!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[killudead]

After ours broke I instituted a whole new set of procedures for myself. I more carefully leveled the tank and stand using a carpenters level and sticking vinyl flooring tiles in strategic places to the bottom board of the wooden cabinet. I then cut out a piece of heavy-mil black plastic just a tiny bit larger than the tank bottom footprint and fixed that to the top board of the stand. Its not hardly visible as the stand and tank floating base are both black but I feel its an extra guard against stray drops of water soaking into the top board (our breakage was due to a small amount of water seeping into a counter-sunk hole where a bolt went to attach a support leg of the stand. The counter-sunk hole exposed the particle board and when the water hit the particle board the wood material swelled up into a bump, raising that corner of the floating base and causing a line-crack in the tank bottom glass to radiate from that corner, confusingly dumping water into the area under the bottom glass and making the tank appear to be leaking despite no visible problem on the evening when it happened.) I now am very fastidious about cleaning up stray water drops whenever I work with the tank. I keep my tank towel handy and use it frequently.

Of course I can't tell you all the words I've uttered, thinking about an aquarium cabinet being made out of particle board and wistfully remembering the sturdy black angle and wrought iron stands of the many tanks in my youth. But there are trade-offs to everything. We may have had sturdy stands and Metaframe stainless steel frames and flagstone tank bottoms back in those days, but we had awful black "goop" to seal the glass, unlike the fabulous clear and strong silicone sealers of today and the beauty of hiding all that unsightly gear in a nice furniture cabinet!

~~waterdrop~~

aint that the truth!!!