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New to CO2, have a few questions...

T

tennis4you

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Joined
7 Jul 2008
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137
Location
USA
I have a 10 pound tank coming my way with the rest of what I need to add CO2 to my tank. I have a 125 gallon tank that is 6 foot long.

I thought I read somewhere here that it might be tough to distribute the CO2 across the tank evenly or something? Am I going to have such issues? Anything I can to do balance it out?

Also ordered PMDD. Pumped about stepping up to the next level for my tanks plants. Hopefully this will help.

Thanks!
 
What is an external reactor and how does that help distribute the CO2?

The person I bought the CO2 stuff from is including some tube that breaks the CO2 into smaller bubbles. Is that an external reactor?

My filter is on one side of the 6' tank, will that make any difference?

Thanks!!!
 
An external reactor is something like this that goes on the return pipe from your external filter. The co2 is bubbled into here and it mixes with the water and dissolves into the water. When working correctly they are very efficient, don't need regular cleaning like glass diffusers and get even more equipment out of the tank.

As to circulation you need to make sure the water is being distributed all around the tank. This can be done either by effective use of a spraybar or arranging the outlet correctly. We usually reckon that you need to circulate the tank's volume 10 times an hour, but this would mean you would need a filter of around 5,625 lph! That's more than two of the Fluval FX5s. In practice big tanks seem to work well with less flow that this. The other option is to put a large flow pump in such as a Koralia pump to move the CO2 and nutrients around the tank. The flow they produce is much more spread out than a traditional powerhead for really low power use.
 
Hmmm, interesting. I do have a power head on the opposite side as the filter to help move things along. I will have to look into this external reactor. Never heard of it, but then again, this CO2 is all new to me too.

Thanks!
 
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