Co2 Going In - Help Me Get It Tuned Please.

[Katch]

I took delivery of my 2kg FE today and have gone ahead and bolted my reg and solonoid to it.

Tank;

24G (90 litre)
36w 50/50 daylight/actinic blue (spare 36w ready to go in to make 72w total)

I have placed TPN+ root tabs at the base of my plants and dose liquid TPN+ a few days ago. I have also dosed some extra micros yesterday.

I have placed a glass diffuser in the back of the tank (The whole back of my tank is a 3 stage filter box. I have the CO2 in the 3rd compartment with the heater and return pump)

I have installed a drop checker with 4dkh solution and started my injection at about 1 bubble per second.

How long should it take for the drop checker to change and when should I put the other 36w light back in? I've got the lights and CO2 on a timer - how long should I set the photoperiod for?

 

[stevereade]

Is your tank an Orca MT40 by any chance? If so I'd leave the other lighting tube as it may be too much light, my MT40 is fully planted and growing mad at the mo with yeast CO2 and the standard 36W bulb.

 

[theshadowinc]

I took delivery of my 2kg FE today and have gone ahead and bolted my reg and solonoid to it.

Tank;

24G (90 litre)
36w 50/50 daylight/actinic blue (spare 36w ready to go in to make 72w total)

I have placed TPN+ root tabs at the base of my plants and dose liquid TPN+ a few days ago. I have also dosed some extra micros yesterday.

I have placed a glass diffuser in the back of the tank (The whole back of my tank is a 3 stage filter box. I have the CO2 in the 3rd compartment with the heater and return pump)

I have installed a drop checker with 4dkh solution and started my injection at about 1 bubble per second.

How long should it take for the drop checker to change and when should I put the other 36w light back in? I've got the lights and CO2 on a timer - how long should I set the photoperiod for?

within an hour if tuned right it should turn to the green and stay green throughout the day(Just remember more plants = more co2 as in bubbles per second) Depending on the size of the tank so 24g I would say maybe 2-3 bubbles per second and a good recommendation would be to not use water in your bubble counter, it makes it way to hard to read the bubbles per second use something like glycerin i think thats the spelling that is what I am basing my 2-3 bubbles per second on and slowly decrease as it starts to turn a very light green. Circulation is key in the tank especially to achieve your 30ppm of co2, if you find you are up to about 10 bubbles per second and still not achieving resaults its cause of circulation issues or you made your 4dkh wrong with just 2 bubbles per second you should see changes within a few hours
Hope this helps

 

[Katch]

Its a DD Nano Cube but very similar to yours. I'm running proper pressurised CO2 so I think I'd be better off with more watts per gallon.

It took a while to get my drop checker to turn green - 4 hours in fact but I slowly tweaked up the rate - just watching to see if it stays green for a 10 hour cycle without going yellow.

 

[SuperColey1]

Its a DD Nano Cube but very similar to yours. I'm running proper pressurised CO2 so I think I'd be better off with more watts per gallon.

It took a while to get my drop checker to turn green - 4 hours in fact but I slowly tweaked up the rate - just watching to see if it stays green for a 10 hour cycle without going yellow.

You won't be better off with more light on pressurised. You will be more capable of facilitating more light.

It's actually the other way around from your 'phrasing' the better the CO2 is sorted the lower you can go with the light.

By that I mean with pressurised CO2 you can get down as far as 0.5WPG with good success. Lower than you can go with non CO2. Maybe even further than 0.5WPG. because once the plants aren't using energy striving to glean low CO2 then they use their energys to use the light more effectively.

Hard to understand I know.

So in summary:

pressurised CO2 well sorted means you can choose more light levels than yeast and non CO2. Lower and higher levels.

I would ditch the blue/white though. that isn't going to be doing much for the plants.

AC

 

[Katch]

I am officially confused;

how about a simple do this...?

What lights should I use

How long should they be on

I start injecting CO2 1 hour before lights on and stop injecting 1 hour before lights off.

My goal is to get my plants grown and established quickly - i want my underwater jungle.

 

[theshadowinc]

I am officially confused;

how about a simple do this...?

What lights should I use

How long should they be on

I start injecting CO2 1 hour before lights on and stop injecting 1 hour before lights off.

My goal is to get my plants grown and established quickly - i want my underwater jungle.

Turn your co2 on at the same time your lights turn on, its how i run my system and no issues(not enough proof is out there on why to turn on 1hour before and shut off 1 hour before)you can't turn co2 on early in nature and shut it off early
You need to know what kind of lighting you require(Plants have certain lighting requirements) as in 1watt per gallon rule to figure your watts out, its prefference on weather you want low medium or extreme lighting conditions but keep in mind the higher you go in lighting the more algue will grow very easy with unstable co2 lvls
Your last point to establish a planted tank can take up to a year, so quickly is not the key, took about 6months for my micro sword to start sending off shoots, but once established they go crazy, some plants are slower than others

Hopefully this takes the confussion out of it

 

[SuperColey1]

It sounds more complicated than it is. Consider a low light non CO2 tank with 1WPG. the plants are using energy to get CO2 as it is very low. Therefore they use less energy on the light.

Now consider a tank same size, same setup completely, same plants but with pressurised. Now the CO2 is abundant. This tank will only need (example) 0.5WPG for the plants to 'see' the same amount of light as they now have more free energy available to utilise light as they are not struggling for CO2.

My gist. 36W over 24USG = 1.5WPG. That is plenty However change to a more suitable bulb ibetween 4000 and 8000K

AC

 

[Katch]

I have a new T5 Interpet 24 watt daylight tube that fits - would that be better?

 

[SuperColey1]

Will be shorter as you know. Can the ballast take a lower bulb without blowing it? If not then you need to get a 36W daylight.

Those white/blue ones are for marine tanks.

AC

 

[Katch]

I've run the bulb in it for a shortwhile already so I assume its ok.

 

[theshadowinc]

I've run the bulb in it for a shortwhile already so I assume its ok.

your ballast will have a set rating on it on what it can accept i.e. 24w-36w, 36w only, 24w only those are examples. something that runs only a 36watt bulb only will run a 24w but the bulb will burn out in no time. I run extreme watts over my tank 2.9wpg if i am remembering right, i had a bulb burn out and never bothered replacing it and stuff seems to grow alot faster and quicker so I can kinda relate to what he is saying about using less watts. So what he is telling you is that 36w might be a waste of money if you can go with a 24w bulb for the same reason you will end up achieving the same results or posibly even better results if running co2 and dropping your watts down.