New to CO2 - Need QUICK advice

[MisterCee]

About a week ago I set up a 2 bottle DIY CO2 system on my 55 gallon tank and was dispersing the bubbles through the intake of my HOB filter. I was using a pretty potent recipe I found elsewhere that used 2 cups sugar, 2 teaspoons baking soda and 2 teaspoons of yeast for each bottle. My KH to start was at 3.98 and PH was 7.8. After a few days my PH seemed to stabilize at 7.0 and KH at about 3.4.

Yesterday I decided to purchase a Nutrafin bubble ladder for diffusing the CO2. My CO2 'tanks' were pretty much spent yesterday so I mixed up new batches and installed the ladder at the same time. I decided to test my PH this morning and saw that it had dropped to 6.4. My KH remained in the 3.4 range. This puts my CO2 too high at 32 ppm.

My questions are:

Is the ladder really that much better at diffusion than letting the filter chew up the bubbles?

I have removed one bottle of the mix, hoping to get the PH to raise up a little. Should I do a water change as well (my tap PH is quite high at 7.9)?

Would you recommend keeping both bottles but going down to a more conventional recipe? (less yeast)?

Any help is really appreciated...sure don't want to kill anything fooling with this.

Thanks,
Mark

 

[guppygirl]

Well, since I'm new at this too, I would agree that the nutrafin diffuses better than the HOB filter. That is a pretty potent recipe. Maybe you should try a different one. Here's a good thread. Link
Yes, keep the 2 bottles on the 55. I assume they are 2 2Liter bottles.
Hope this helps!
Robin