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Old 07-10-2004, 06:13 PM
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You need to have a co2 reactor to have 000% dissapation

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On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 10:38:52 +1000, "floguru"
wrote:

Forgive me for being controversial but I have drawn the following
conclusions on CO2 injection.

CO2 injection I can only summise has one achievement, to increase the
acidity of an aquarium and thankfully not as effectively as it could.
CO2 and H2O form H2CO3 (carbonic acid), the same as in rainfall which
naturally is pH 4.5 - 5.5.
If I use an air pump and the % make up of atmospheric air is .036% CO2, a
100 litre per hour air pump (very small) is going to deliver .036 of a litre
of CO2 into my tank every hour its working. That equates to 1 litre a day or
100000 milligrams of CO2 a day. Now aquatic plants only need about 30
milligrams of CO2 per litre of water so I have delivered 33 times more CO2
(based on a 100 litre tank) than they need.
Now here's the kicker. Most of the bubbles go straight to the surface and
take the CO2 with them (air pump or CO2 injection) but at the surface create
agitation which is very effective in capturing and dissolving air into the
water. Without being able to scientifically quantify I would suggest surface
agitation in an aquarium is probably responsible for 50-75% of the dissolved
gases in an aquarium (in oceans and lakes its near 100%). Although the size
of the bubbles will affect the air to water exchange (based on the surface
area size a lot of smaller bubbles will release a lot more gas than fewer
large ones). So a biowheel is doing much more than CO2 injection ever could.
If you want to hypersaturate your aquarium with CO2 a readily available
solution would be to pour in a bottle of soda water which is just water
hypersaturated with CO2 gas. The only thing is that pH would be extremely
low (never measured it but probably less than 4).

I haven't done the experiments (but I might) having an interest in creating
huge ocean algal blooms in the ocean to suck up some of the excess CO2 we
have injected into our environment.
I would be interested in wheither anyone has actually measured an increase
in dissolved CO2 before and after injection and the corresponding effect on
pH.

Dean