Advise needed on Bubble counter water

[algae_connoisseur]

Hi, iv kept tanks a long time, through the years learnt a lot through trial and error. I don't consider myself a guru I'm still learning as we all are. Recently I encountered a problem with melt. Literally every plant was affected and I had not changed my routine for years I was puzzled... I have a heavily planted tank ei dosed and pressurised co2 via inline atomizer. So I noticed pearling was a bit lax (a sign I notice that tells me its almost time for a refill) so I checked my co2 bottle and it was low, in doing so I noticed the inline glass bubble counter had fell from its housing and was upside down and the contents where gone. Check valves are in the co2 loop so I knew it had gone into the tank... So my question is, given that was the 3rd bottle to pass through that water, would the water in the counter be extremely acidic thus getting into the tank had dropped the pH enough to shock the plants and cause the melt? Many different species have suffered. I know the process of diffusing co2 into water causes carbonic acid and over time reduces kh and the pH swings, but in a sealed unit (bubble counter) can the pH of the water go extremely low? Eg the information im led to believe pH 7 is neutral pH 6 is 10 times more acidic pH 5 is 100 times etc etc so a pH of 2 is 100,000 times more acidic than neutral, so would this cause catastrophy?? I can't find any information on the internet so thought id pick the brains on here, any information\educated opinion would be much appreciated. Tank is recovering now so I'm not as stressed out just wanting answers really, in the comotion of this my jewels have bread oddly!

Thanks in advance
Andy

 

[Zeus.]

No expect myself, new to the hobby hobby. However...
The amount of water in the bubble counter in mine is 1ml for example say yours is 5ml your tank say is 40litres so your tank has 40,000ml so if the water was very acidic the dilution factor of 8000 would reduce the acidity of the water that got in the tank 8000 times. So no big deal.
Do you have fish in your tank? Did they all die? If not the pH swing was within normal range for CO2 injection.
The bubble counter only gives a visual way of measuring the CO2 injection rate. Once set the presence of water is only a visual aid of the input rate.

Sent from Mountolympus via neural interface