Thinking Hurts
Hi Myka,
I must say you’re tank really should not be this much trouble.
This is a case where I really wish I were close enough for me to stop by and take a look and a whiff.
I know I am missing something and likely it is obvious and simple. Though it is painful I am thinking.
Do you have any idea the millions you could make killing off Echinodorus tenellus?
Effortless or at least easy water changes are good. One of the things I always encourage people to think about when setting up a new aquarium is maintenance and in particular water changes.
CO2 is a funny thing for all the trouble and expense we go to get and maintain CO2 levels, it is actually quite cooperative in it’s affinity to water, it turns, far as I can tell carbon dioxide is carbon dioxide and we have a number of alternatives. I was going to do a piece on this but I really offended a few people around here so I try not to talk about it too much.
For years (30 or maybe even 40) I have supplemented CO2 in small tanks or tubs (I use a lot of ‘Tupperware’ kind of containers) by holding my breath for 30 seconds or so and exhaling, usually through tubing to glass air stones. Recently I have started using domes and reactors in addition to the glass stones. I never really gave it much thought or tested how effective it was.
There is, you may have noticed, a lot of discussion regarding carbon dioxide around here.
Five or six weeks ago someone I really admire and have apparently offended to the point he won’t post here anymore, commented on the near impossibility of keeping any tank above 20-gallons with diy CO2 . Well, me being, well me, I commented I thought I could probably keep a 20-gallon tank on exhaled breath.
I have been keeping a 20-gallon tank on exhaled breath using Tom Barr’s internal reactor, next to a 20-gallon tank on diy, same sort of internal reactor set up.
Well it appears (early days) to be quite successful so far. I have four 10-gallon tanks on exhaled breath, each with a different method of diffusion. One 10-gallon tank with no added CO2. One ten-gallon tank on Excel, label dosing. All have identical substrates from the same batch (modified Tom Barr’s worm poop covered by sand blasting gravel), same EI dosing, sitting under the same light fixture all have only a small circulation pump, no filtration. Approximately the same mix of noxious weeds, I eyeballed, weighed and grouped the weeds then the Loud Creature that shares my space mixed them up and randomly distributed them. We have 30 other tubs going to try to account for a few variables, but aside from a couple that have failed to thrive, generally the results, subjectively anyway appear to be mirroring the ten-gallon tanks.
The Loud Creature and I have been studying CO2 disbursement techniques, in our own, perhaps, not all that scientific manor, for a while. I have to admit, every time I think I have something nailed down, something else appears.
I guess in all the sum of what I can say at this point is CO2 is CO2 and there are lots of ways to mess it up.
I know that every other day 70% water changes obviate the need for additional CO2.
That for low demand, I guess I mean low light tanks, water changes or even air pumps can supply the CO2, easily.
Anyway, sorry I am so long winded, I just get going, and well, it is a disease I tell you, a disease.
Biollante