In-Line CO2 reactor vs. CO2 injected into filter

ricoishere

Junior Poster
Jun 28, 2009
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I was considering weather to have an in-line CO2 reactor (AM 1000 or Tom Barr DIY), when I decided to have the CO2 injected straight into my Eheim 2028, fed through the intake tube strainer. This seemed to be the better choice, minimizing clutter. Has anyone done a comparison of the two setups? If so, what are the results. The complete setup is:

Tank: 90G
Light: Catalina 48 inch BLACK SOLAR T5 HO - 8 X 54W
Filtration: Eheim PRO 3 2080 & Eheim PRO 2 2028
CO2: Compressed, Aquariumplants.com electronic regulator, 5lb tank, Milwaukee PH Controller, CO2 is fed into PRO 2 intake tube strainer
 

Just

Junior Poster
Jan 3, 2010
2
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1
Spokane, WA
I haven't tried using an inline reactor, but so far piping the co2 directly into the filter intake has worked fine for me. I have had this type of co2 in my tanks for over a year, and depending on the size of the filter it can work great, or not so great. It seems like the smaller filters don't have impellers that break up the co2 bubbles as well as the larger filters. It could also be something to do with the amount of turbulence in the filters themselves. The cheapo hang-on-back filters are my favorite for this, since I stick the co2 tubing into the intake which pulls the bubbles upwards through an impeller, and then down, and then up through a couple layers of mesh. This seems to dissolve most of the co2, and usually there isn't much of the co2 that you can see in the aquarium.
 

ricoishere

Junior Poster
Jun 28, 2009
10
0
1
I just switched it over to the Pro 3, since it's so large, maybe it'll break the bubbles some more. The plants are responding incredibly, that's for sure. I'm going to figure out a way to feed the CO2 into both filters, from the sigle regulator, just to have the CO2 going to both.