"jet" wrote in message
oups.com...
I used powdered calcium carbonate. There is no more obvious residue
left in the tank, so hopefully it is as hard as it will get. I expected
to get a higher CO2 levels than this. At 4 KH and 7.4 pH I'm only
getting 4.8 ppm of CO2.
I need to come up with a better way to add the powder at the next water
change. I'm thinking of branching a line off one filter return and
running a very low flow through a bottle DIY reaction chamber with the
calcium carbonate in it. This should eliminate the large swing of
adding the unbuffered powder all at once. It will also give me a bit
more control over the hardness. I can't see going though this bit every
water change as the CO2 tries to catch up with the carbonate.
I consider myself very lucky in the light if what you are going through. The
water out of the tap here already has a high buffer and pH
(10dGH/10dKH/7.4pH), so I don't have to really mess with it on the "hard
side".
I use 2 X 2L yeast powered (500g(2 cups)Raw Sugar, 1.5 tsp bakers yeast,
1.5tsp Baking Soda) CO2 reactors on a 220L (55Gal) tank. The bottles are
alternate cycled (change one bottle each week) to stop massive fluctuations
in the CO2.
My hardness is 10dGH/dKH and the pH is a pleasant 6.8 ~7.0 doing it this
way.
The CO2 diffuser area has seen a few things from bio-ball filled tubes, to
passive bell, inlet injection on the canister filter and currently I'm
having great success just by passing the 2 bottles through a water bubble
counter (acts as a backflow/siphoning prevention and carbonic acid buffer as
well) and then passing that to the venturi input of a powerhead near the
outflow from the main filter.
The bubbles come out fine and are rolled and smashed along the back pane of
glass. I wouldn't have thought this would work well but I must be getting
sufficient CO2 because the plants pearl almost every day. CO2 is part of the
pearling, and good fertiliser is the other part.
As long as you sort your buffering out and settle on a CO2 system I can see
you having masses of healthy plants very shortly
Oz
--
My Aquatic web Blog is at
http://members.optusnet.com.au/ivan.smith