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The importance of a 1 point pH drop

sonicninja said:
thanks Brian.
Since upping my CO2 today (fractionally i should add) my fish are looking fairly sheepish. the corys usually play at the front of the tank but i havent seen them since upping the CO2. The otos are also looking pretty lethargic.
Im not concerned yet but everything has got a bit 'dozy'
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What about reducing your light intensity a little bit to reduce CO2 demand? It looks like these two tiles are really bright and the tank is not that large... You can always use more intensity once you have fixed your problem.

Jordi
 
Thanks Jordi. I had a very lengthy thread about my lights already :)
I had them at 25-27% for a long while and was advised to drop the level for the reason you stated.

Basically I had no luck with this tank until I decided id had enough and was ready to give the whole thing up. As as last ditch attempt I decided to whack them up just to see the results (the lights were the last things left to try). Within a week I was growing stauro and the tank showed the only signs of promise id seen since starting.

They were up at 40% then and Ive slowly dropped them down to 36% each. They probably look a lot brighter since the lights were off in the room when i took that video. I could continue to drop them over the next few weeks too i suppose.
 
Do you have surface film on the water at all ? Fwiw I couldn't get co2 right on my 90cm Untill I added a skimmer, IMO even a slight film traps unused co2 ie at the surface not the substrate and it builds to unhappy levels, surface skimmer alows this to gas off, wasteful but better for livestock and I found I could increase bubble rate significantly without affecting my livestock. Only caution ref the ehiem skimmer it loves to eat shrimp and small fish so it's worth finding a way to prevent this, mesh, foam etc to block the opening.
 
Hi Tim.
No I don't generally. I perform a lot of frequent water changes which helps keep it at bay too.


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It's baffling sometimes, you do seem to have all the bases covered, flow co2 not extreme lighting, just have to keep at it mate, it's a nice looking scape by the way. Also fwiw I use london tap hard water and two different scapes in the same tank, first scape ph drop was from 7.8 -7.1 healthy plants grew in in around 3 months, next scape, same tank lights filter etc ph drop of 1.4-1.6 and I could not get anything to grow and had nothing but issues :crazy: :lol:
 
parotet said:
A short clip to show you how the spray bar ripples the surface when the light and co2 are on, and then what I do during the night. No need to use any skimmer in my case. The spraybar is just 1.5 cm under the water level. This way I achieve a 1 ph drop with KH 10+, inline atomizer, 2 bps and a filter rated 10x the tank volume



Jordi
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You do that every night before you go to bed?
 
Sacha said:
You do that every night before you go to bed?
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When I'm home, when I do not forget it.... But yes, this is done mostly every night. When I wake up in the morning and I'm taking my cup of coffee, I turn it back to its position and add the ferts. That is basically my daily tank management. :)
(But I keep on with my 2x 40% WCs weekly, probably unnecessary but plants and fish love it and it is a longer time twice a week for maintenance: cleaning glass, siphoning debris, etc. time consuming but this is the advantage of having this 65 liters tank as my larger tank)

Jordi
 
Well what you're doing is clearly working. Ten point to Griffindoor!


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Fablau sayd it all.
I was strugling with this issue for months, injecting and injecting, making changes here and there bla bla and guess what.. i follow Clive advise (Ceg4048) I bought a pump, put it right next to the outflow, both poiting into diffuser and in a couple of hours, for the first time i reach a drop of 1 PPm (7.6 to 6.6) ... easy as simple.
Taking a good or closer look i can see the astonishing diferences in the aqua.... mostly right next to the substrate.full of bubbles and the plants with bubbles attached all over them ;) That was quite a diference! Oh if it was!!!

Conclusion: Lack of waterflow never let me have a one ppm drop in the PH cause i was not dissolving it, but wasting it!!. And even, my diffuser is a prety dump... by the time my ADA Diffuser arrived i should be capable of decreasing a little bit more what is coming from the fire exting. Cause with a diffuser like this ADA the bubbles will be broken even better :)

Now, not only i have to decrease closing the valve but i finally got that drop! ;)

I can see the bubbles going all the way closest to the substrate and not up there!. Not going up as before. Just a little insignificant parcel.
And of course plants dancing a little bit more cause ot increasing flow but... who cares? As long they get what they need, and grow beautifully, with colours let them dance !!

For me it was this simple to solve this "drop" issue.

Best regards,
 
Thanks Paulo. Ceg helped me a lot on my original thread actually. I originally started with a much lower rated filter and a set of lily pipes. Then I changed to a spray bar and diffierent flow patter, then one additional powerhead.....then another. The I finially changed my filter completely, ditched the powerheads and increased the spray bar diameter to 16/22mm.

Im convinced my problems now have little to do with overall flow. Im not far exceeding the suggested flow minimum for a tank my size although im sure there are small alterations i could make to improve the flow patters. The spray bar sits even higher now which should help.

Anyway, Ive increased the CO2 which is making the entire water column look like ive put a giant alkazetzer in it. Not sure if this is good or not but I can visibly see the flow pattern working and the CO2 reaching the back of the tank before it rises back to the surface.
 
I also see but in the lower part of the tank right next to the substrate, wich is something that before i never saw.. today i even saw some Co2 bubbles being sucked by the inflow.

I dont´need to reach this kind of things.. i think you´re wasting Co2 and not dissolving it. That is where your concern should be.

Ive increased the CO2 which is making the entire water column look like ive put a giant alkazetzer in it
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Paulo Soares said:
I dont´need to reach this kind of things.. i think you´re wasting Co2 and not dissolving it. That is where your concern should be.
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I am not sure if you are right Paulo!
The way the atomizer works is by dong exactly that - filling the tank with micro bubbles - so they can contact the plants foliage & be adsorbed by the plant.

Sure you are using a lot of gas that will just disappear into the atmosphere but that is the pay off of using a atomiser but the method works very well.

If you choose to use a reactor there will be no visible bubbles but you will still use a very similar amount of gas to get the same growth rate, you just wont witness the gas dispersing into the atmosphere but it still does!
 
I do believe that with a pretty good diffuser there wont be so much waste... i see it for my self.
Of course with a reactor is thee same or more profitable even.

I´m telling you.. as soon i put the pump i had to reduce the Co2 coming from the FE. Cause after 4 hours my drop was transparent. Not even yellow or so.

I reduce it and got the drop also green lime. So this makes me conclude that before i was pumping a lot to aim the same goal and didn´t reached it.

I´m only telling my experience.
 
By the way.. look at the ADA set up´s... you see those ADA diffuser pumping just a bit. It´s almost like dust. Not bubbles.
 
So can someone clear something up for me then. In an ideal world should I be aiming for gin clear water once my CO2 is dissolved? In other words is my CO2 not 'dissolved' if im seeing micro bubbles?
 
No, there are two main ways of feeding Co2 into the water...
One is use micro bubbles that are forced to travel around the tank in an effort to contact the plants & of course, many will dissolve during their travel.
The other is to completely dissolve the bubbles in a separate chamber ( a reactor) & circulate the dissolved gas within the tank.
On top of that, there are certain circumcises where a column of bubbles are introduced into the tank & are more gently circulated around the tank as it appears in the ADA tanks.
However tying to compare an average hobbyist tank to an ADA professionally attended tank, might be a bit of an ambition rather than a reality!
So there are two main approaches to the same goal, both work!
However it is possible to use other methods if you can get every factor to work in unison.... not so easy.
 
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