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Low-light CO2 injection?

rawr

Member
Joined
14 Apr 2009
Messages
598
Location
Enfield
Looking through the journals, people like Mark, George, Dan and Graeme who use CO2 injection all have expensive luminaires with god knows how many watts per gallon.

I was just wondering - is it...what's the word...a good idea to inject CO2 with low lighting (e.g. 1.5wpg)? Is there anything you need to take into consideration when doing so?

The only person I can recall doing so is SuperColey.
 
Thomas, Moses did not come down from the mountaintop with a rule carved in a stone tablet that low light and CO2 are incompatible. Plants are composed of about 40% by weight of carbon, and that's regardless of the type of light they live under. Carbon is THE most critical environmental component. CO2, via the assistance of light creates plant mass. So it doesn't matter what lighting the tank has. CO2 is added to improve the growth performance of all Submerged Aquatic Macrophytes specifically because of the carbon disadvantage they face when submerged.

The lighting level shouldn't even be an issue. Growth rate and health are all that matter. In fact, CO2 combined with low lighting is the ideal scenario exactly because the risk of algae is so much lower with lower lighting. Stop using light as the parameter. To use Carbon, or to not use Carbon is the proper metric.

Cheers,
 
Ahh right, that makes a lot more sense now! Thanks for clearing that up, Clive. :)
 
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