The begining of CO2 injection is harmfull?

hadjici2

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I would like to ask if CO2 from DIY CO2 injection system is harmfull to fish at the begining...my reasoning is taht I now have a fairly high pH of around 8 which is quite good for mollies, but when I will start to inject CO2 the pH will drop.....wouldn't this pH flactuation be harmfull to fish? The CO2 injection must be done only when the lights ar on and not at night when the lights are off right?

PS:I want to inject CO2 for my plants.....
 
yes it will reduce your PH mine sits at about 6.6-6.8 but the effect on your system will depend on the KH value of your water (buffering capacity) the softer your water the bigger and faster the drop (i think, someone confirm/correct this please).

good luck switching it off at night!!! if your worried about the fish run an airstone only at night for the first week or so, surface aggitation will drive off co2 so you dont suffocate your fishies at night. once the plants are thriving (pearling) remove the airstone as the water will be saturated with oxygen by then.

hope that helps
 
I think when you say flucuation, that really is the key, you have to try and maintain co2 levels at a constant ideal rate of 30ppm, depending on your setup you could run 2 bottles instead of one and change them ofton, you would not change them both at once, leave 3 or 4 days between them but rotate the changes so you get a more even supply of co2.

Fish will adapt to lower or higher Ph as long as its within reason, Ph works on a logarithmic scale, a drop in 1 from say 8 to 7 Ph is a drop of 10x, a drop of another 1 is 100x of a change so its quite different.

But if you keep the co2 supply at a near enough constant rate you will avoid major Ph swings and your fish should adapt accordingly.

Edit: as jimbooo says run an airstone at night if your worried, i run my diy co2 24/7 in the tank at as near 25-30ppm as i can get, if you keep the supply constant your Ph will not be flucuating and then it shouldnt be a problem.
 
keep an eye on the fish in the morning......if i dont run an airstone at night the fish are gasping by the morning - this may be a commbo of heavy plant and fish load both using O2 while the water is quite warm and holding less of it - beware ( i lost about 8 cardinals before i spotted they were suffering as i dont normally look at the tank before work!)
 
If your worried about CO2 at night - I've just spent £25 on a gas solinoid to turn it on/off with the lights.

Just need to get a PH controller now :whistle:
 
having co2 shut off at night is a must.....i still need an airstone though......under the cupboard looks like NASA with digital timers for the:

lights/co2 10am-10pm
moon light led 10pm-midnight
airstone midnight-9am
under gravel heater 1hr in 4 between 9am -9pm
 
My pH is 9....I am sure about that....I never had a pH of 9.....I think a pH pf 9 and a kH of 5 don't match meaning that I think a kH of 5 is quite low with a pH of 9......what could cause this increase of pH?
 
Hi hadjici2,

You are right a pH of 9 and a KH of 5 doesn't match. Are you sure your test kits are functioning properly? Older test kits quite often give false results. It may be a good idea to have your tank water tested at a LFS.

Things that could cause pH to rise include, running an airstone, limestone rocks in the tank, filtering over coral or limestone and also putting any kind of alkaline buffer in your tank.

Good luck!
 
I had an airstone running for 5 days, all day and night. The reason for running an airstone was because I added fish in my tank and I wanted to make sure that there was enough o2 in my tank for the fish to become acclimated safer.....now I have removed the airstone.....My test kit showed a different reading 7 days ago so I believe its not the test kit....
 
hadjici

I see you have this question on a few forums around the internet, and from what i have been reading to the replys you have gotten, you have been given some sound advice from some very experienced people, but you come up with new twists to the question each time you are given an answer, basically i dont want to be mean but how many answers do you need!!!

As regards the Ph question iggy has pretty much answered your question, you ran an airstone, if your test kit is giving you different readings go to your LFS and get them to test your water, look in your tank as suggested.....what else is in there, if all that fails do a water change and then test your water, test your tap water as well.

And Tiggs having your co2 shut off at night is not a *must* for you perhaps it is, your tank may be heavily stocked and that may be the reason, i and many others run our DIY co2 24/7 with absolutly no problems to our fish, and if you think about it, its sort of difficult to switch off DIY co2 and i would imagine if you were doing it, it would cause you more problems than it would solve.
 
we ran our co2 24/7... until one morning Lorna came down to a tank full of fish gasping at the surface and our favorite plec belly up :(

She added an airstone straight away and disconnected the co2 (sod the PH swing the fish were dying) we only lost the one plec. So after a good 4 months of planted fun - the tank crashed.

(with a KH of 9 and a PH of 7.0 it should have been fine...)

We really dont want that happening again so will be shutting off over night from now on :)
 
zig said:
its sort of difficult to switch off DIY co2
still trying to thing about that one myself - the mix will still produce CO2 overnight but if its shut off the preasure will build up...

i've got a few ideas about how to stop ant nasty explosions but The container will then be under preasure and it'll get realeased all in one go when it comes back on...

still thinking :)
 
Let me know when you have it figured out :D
 
Simple. Use a two way adjustable airline splitter. Connect the CO2 line to input and one of the outputs. Close the second output for CO2 flow, open it up for the CO2 to escape through it.
 
gf225 said:
Simple. Use a two way adjustable airline splitter. Connect the CO2 line to input and one of the outputs. Close the second output for CO2 flow, open it up for the CO2 to escape through it.
Yeah i had thought of that allright, but i figured that because when you mix up the sugar yeast etc in your DIY bottle its the pressure that pushes the air or co2 through the tubing and this pressure is caused by the fermentation of the sugar and yeast, now if you open up the valve and let the air react with the mixture overnight, i "think" that the air will slow down the fermentation and eventually it will stop quite quickly, so im not sure if that would be a good solution.

I suppose if you used some sort of valve that would only allow the co2 out without letting the air back in that might work, if you imagine when you ferment home made wine in the big jars or demijons and you see the plastic airlock type valve on the top of it filled with a little water, this i presume is to stop the air getting back in, something like that maybe.

Interesting, interesting.

I could be totally wrong of course :D

But it would be good if you could come up with a solution, i havent read of anyone else doing it with DIY.

Anyone else any ideas............. :thumbs:
 

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