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DC position in tank

Rob P

Member
Joined
13 Oct 2013
Messages
785
I've noticed plenty of photos and people on here who position their DC near the top on a side pane. Also the hook over type DC's are up near the surface.

The instructions that came with my Neutro one said to place a couple of inches from the substrate so that's where I have mine, opposite side to diffuser.

Which is right?!

Regards,
Rob
 
I wondered this myself and have moved its position from lower down and opposite to higher up. Does not seem to make a great deal of difference.

To be honest I am not too concerned about the drop checked and I sue it as a very rough guide. I did as Clive advises and run a pH test and my pH does drop by 1 so I am happy this is correct. My drop checker is green but nowhere near a lime colour.

Just trust the pH reads from your meter I would say.
 
I agree with andy, im not convinced by drop checkers at all I use mine only as a rough guide, I think having it near the substrate is to give an indication of whether or not your co2 is getting down low enough, by far the best indication is the plants, if your low / carpet plants are growing well and algae free then all is good, think of a drop checker as a visual indicator and your plants as your test kit at least thats the way I look at it :)
 
Agreed!! I trusted the drop checker when i first set my tank up and it caused me no end of problems. As Mark says you are far better off trusting your pH profile. I know you live close to me Rob, and probably have the same hard water? Look for a drop in pH of about 0.7 from gas on to just before your lights come on. It should then remain steady throughout the period you are injecting Co2.

I also tried placing my drop checker close to the substrate and to the top of the tank. To be honest i couldn't see any difference in colour. Mines a dark lime green colour and never seems to really change. Its that colour when the lights come on and stays the same until the lights go off.

My plants pearl everyday now, and my fish aren't gasping for air. I use this as an indicator that i'm doing something right :)
 
Thanks Lee, I've done a Ph pen test last week and it looked good. Dropped from 7.4 to 6.5 at lights on where it stayed throughout light period.

Oddly I noticed your kh was quite a bit higher than mine considering how close we live. My tap gh is 13.4 and kh 5.5. Isn't your kh double that??

How's your tank doing anyway mate?

Rob
 
Hi Rob! To be honest i used the online water report so they may be some discrepancies in the results? Did you carry out a test yourself?

It's looks as though you have your Co2 sorted anyway? :).

I had so many problems with Co2 when i initially set up. I lost all of my carpeting plants :(. Things are going really well now though. the tanks looking great and the carpeting plants are spreading really well.

Ive just convinced the Mrs that we need a nano tank in the living room :smug:. So i'm just about ready to set that up. I'm gonna do a mini Iwagumi, and try a few more demanding plants. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in! I've defiantly got the bug ;)

How's your tank going? I read that you were getting ready to do a re-scape?
 
Yeh I've done LOTS of testing in recent months on tank and tap water. Even found out there's 0.1ppm nitrite straight out of the tap having not managed a clear test from tank water!!

Rescape on the horizon, mini landscape rock job. Think I've found a layout I like ;) just found the wood got in the way and was covered in bba, it's all cleaned up and gone to a good home anyway lol.

As for my co2, Ph profile seems fine, like you non countable bubble rate lol, but struggling to get flow/circulation right after considerable moving stuff about. It's futile really as I'll be moving hardware position when doing the new layout so hope to get it all sorted then :)
 
Sounds as though you are getting on top of things. I'm also liking the sound of your new scape :) You'll have to start a journal on here mate.

I was using lilly pipes to begin with, my flow distribution was terrible. In the end i switched over to a spray bar along the full length of the back glass. I also started using an inline diffuser. I've never looked back to be honest. It's a sure fire way to get your flow/distribution right.

Good luck with the re-scape mate, looking forward to seeing some pictures ;)
 
I've noticed plenty of photos and people on here who position their DC near the top on a side pane. Also the hook over type DC's are up near the surface.



The instructions that came with my Neutro one said to place a couple of inches from the substrate so that's where I have mine, opposite side to diffuser.



Which is right?!

It doesn't matter where you put it. The dropchecker is a guide Neo. It can show you the path, but you must walk the path.

Cheers,
 
Yeh I've done LOTS of testing in recent months on tank and tap water. Even found out there's 0.1ppm nitrite straight out of the tap having not managed a clear test from tank water!!

Or this could just confirm that home test kits are rubbish... There's plenty of fresh rainwater about. See what result you get off that.
 
Even found out there's 0.1ppm nitrite straight out of the tap having not managed a clear test from tank water!!
And just how did you measure this ??? I doubt a consumer grade test kit could measure this, especially if other salts are present, especially sodium apparently.
 
It doesn't matter where you put it. The dropchecker is a guide Neo. It can show you the path, but you must walk the path.

Cheers,

I could do with a little explanation of something that I could be overthinking ref flow/distribution. So the idea of injecting co2 properly is that we dissolve the bubbles in the water right, as best we can, so I'm right in thinking that actually seeing bubbles all around the tank isn't the be all and end all? When I checked my PH profile, the PH pen readings were taken from an area of the aquarium where there wasn't much in the way of bubbles, but the readings looked good as you confirmed. I'm asking as I can't seem to get to a flow where I see bubbles all around the tank (using a 2/3rds length spraybar + Koralia 900 (tried both ends) in an 80cm tank). But if i'm gettng a good PH profile and movement on all my plants then they are being serviced by the dissolved CO2?

Regards,
Rob
 
And just how did you measure this ??? I doubt a consumer grade test kit could measure this, especially if other salts are present, especially sodium apparently.

Nutrafin mini master liquid test. I never had a reading at all for Nitrite until I upgraded tanks, and then had trace colouring in results every test thereafter, attributed (by me) to loss of bacteria when swapping over. After 3 weeks of testing with trace of colour present (no reading = clear test), I tested tap water that had been stood 24 hours and got a higher 0.1 reading on the scale. Yorkshire Water mean for my area reckons 0.0612 with EU limit 0.5. Yorkshire Water told me:

As you are aware it's not always ideal for keeping fish as some types of fish require specialised environments, so it's important you seek advice from your aquarist.
Our water quality data for the supply zone which serves your home shows that the values can be quite varied.
The nitrite levels on the data from our 2012 report ranges from <0.009 to 0.29, this is normal as the reading will not always be the same
 
All that is academic. No Nitrogen test kit at the Hobby grade level can possibly return consistently valid and accurate readings.
The test kit readings are not acceptable, no matter whether they confirm one's suspicion or not. You would be well advised to stop testing for Nitrogen compounds. It wastes time and energy better well spent on achieving good flow and distribution

I could do with a little explanation of something that I could be overthinking ref flow/distribution. So the idea of injecting co2 properly is that we dissolve the bubbles in the water right, as best we can, so I'm right in thinking that actually seeing bubbles all around the tank isn't the be all and end all?

Seeing bubbles may or may not indicate whether there is good dissolution. There are lots of combination of things that can add up to goodness or badness. So, it's entirely possible to have bubbles everywhere and to concurrently have great CO2 dissolution, and it is also possible to have bubbles everywhere and to concurrently have lousy CO2 dissolution.

The bubbles help to show whether it's likely that you have good distribution.

CO2 dissolution is a completely different factor from distribution. Both need to be good, but the problems associated with them are attacked separately.

I agree with your conclusion that if the pH profile is good and the plants sway in the breeze then this indicates that both factors are addressed properly. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with the DC because the DC has problems of it's own due to the physics of gas movement in a liquid and the concentration of the water's CO2 is not even close to being the same at every physical point in the tank. The CO2 concentration that the DC sees is different than at a location just in front of a leaf. So no matter where you place the DC, it would be a coincidence if it matched what any plant is seeing.

Sooooo, the way to interpret a DC is to first examine the plants and the rest of the tank with your eyes. When things are going well, note the color of the DC, and when things are not going so well, also note the color. Understand the patterns of color changes throughout the day and compare it to the pH profile that you measured. In that way you calibrate the DC mounted in that particular position. You are free to move it around to try and find an "ideal" location, but this is pure fantasy. No matter where you put it, you still need to correlate it's readings to your observation of the tanks health and the pH profile. Many people report a lovely green DC and the tank suffers terribly from CO2 starvation.

Know this: CO2 is notoriously difficult to measure accurately, and that is true of trying to measure any gas in any liquid. That's one of the reasons Nitrogen test kits are not accurate.

We have a dropchecker guide in the Tutorial section of the forum, even though we are aware that it's basically a caveman tool, but any real tool will cost a lot more money than you'll ever want to spend.

Cheers,
 
I think in the near future I will upgrade in a new more powerful external with more 'cojones' :D and diffuse into that somehow. Seems to be the best way for a lot of folk :)
 
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