acclimating fish to CO2 levels in tank

[Green Thumb Aquatics]

I currently have a 75 gallon I do not care much about, it has algae, its going to be redone soon when I have some excess cash for the plants and fish I am planning for it, so for now I use to acclimate fish and shrimp to the 20 gallon which right now is my "show" tank

I slowly raise the CO2 level in the 75 and adjust light accordingly, however this does from time to time add some extra algae to the tank, I do not want to fluxuate the levels on my 20 gallon as I finally just pretty much got all the algae out of it, right now I am gettin some more serpaes used to the higher levels in the 75 before dumping them in the 20



I would like anyone and everyone's advise on how you acclimate your fish to your CO2 levels, my levels are high enough if I just put them in at that level without letting them get used to it, it will kill them

also if the man himself would be kind enough to join in, Tom, how do you keep your fish @ 70ppm without killing them, I am referencing the recent radio show you did where you stated some of your tanks are @ 70ppm

I do not use wetdry's as I do not have you room in my weirdly setup fishroom to do them, as well as I have a collection of nice canister filters so I figure I might as well use them, in the future I will be converting to take advantage of what they allow with hidding equipment and addin oxygen

 

[ShadowMac]

IME, all that is needed is for the fish to be added at night with the lights out and no CO2 going. They seem to adjust fine the following day to the addition of CO2. I aerate most tanks at night or have a good surface ripple.

 

[Green Thumb Aquatics]

I aerate at night on all tanks, also my tanks have a ton of surface ripple, lowest amount of circulation I have in a planted tank w CO2 is ~ 15x and circulation pumps are right at waters surface to get extra ripple.

if I dont give them at least a week before I go full bore with my CO2 I usually lose a fish or a couple shrimp...

I would be extremely interested to see how much CO2 I actually have in my tanks. I am planning on building one of the CO2 meters that Tom described at some point, or buying one when they become available..

 

[ShadowMac]

It does make me wonder if I have enough!?

What is your bubble count like? say on your 20 gallon? I wish there was a good way to measure CO2, I do have a pH probe/controller, but wasn't sure where to get the membrane Tom described.

 

[Green Thumb Aquatics]

I do not use a bubble counter on any of my setups, my 20L, I would think a little more than 2bps but no clue, I just judge by plant growth, algae, and fish lastly, as long as I am not gettin algae I will turn it down, but eventually with each tank I get it where they fish/ shrimp are not being gassed and I dont get algae, some are lower some are higher, I used to run 1bps on a 5 gallon if that helps

really BPS is useless IMO as it really depends on how effective the method you are using to get it into the water is.. I have a modded aquarium plants.com reactor on my 75 that is super effective after the modifications I made, my 20L goes through a GLA atomizer as well as it partially gets pushed through a zoomed 501 with the bubbles that were too big and went straight for the surface, the smaller ones all get blown around the tank, in the 5 gallon I used a ceramic disk difuser that put out almost as small of bubbles as the atomizer

but generally if you dont have algae, you have plenty CO2, that is in my opinion of course

 

[nipat]

Don't you find it odd about "training the fish for high CO2". As other people (or at least
most other people) don't have to do this. They would just put fish in before
CO2 injection begins and that's it. If you have to train your fish for that,
I think your problem isn't not enough CO2.

This too much emphasis in CO2 have made me sad. Even the magic wording
"bump up CO2 till fish stress and dial down a bit". Yes, Amano admits he used to
kill fish by CO2 but that was (were) by accident.

 

[Green Thumb Aquatics]

I think your problem isn't not enough CO2.

This too much emphasis in CO2 have made me sad.

the problem of acclimating my fish to the CO2 level?? other than that I have no problem, and once acclimated they do great. I have great growth any algae that was growing as it was a new tank so it got a bad case of diatoms, is now gone. good growth+no algae=no problems IMO if it takes my fish a week or two to get used to it, that cools with me as this is one of my heavily scaped tanks and its very much about the growth and looks as compared to how happy my fish are. I will raise the lights and lower the CO2 once everything is grown in nicely.

if you look up 90% of problems people are having its not enough CO2, followed in a not even close second and third with poor water quality and not enough nutrients, I believe there is an emphasis on CO2 for a reason.

 

[Green Thumb Aquatics]

I do however get tired of hearing its a CO2 problem everytime I have an issue, that is all anyone ever answers for the most part, the 20L I am talking about used to have a ridiculous amount of CO2 going to it when I was having original algae issues, when I turned down the CO2 is actually when the diatoms and whatever green algae was starting died off.

originally no livestock was in tank as I was pushing at least 10 bps to try to get the tank off to a good start, however I believe the excess amount of osmocote + was the issue. or possibly some other water quality issue leaking out of the DW or EC, or old substrate that was used in part of the layering....

however everthing is going well so I dont wanna change anything or fluxuate the CO2 to accomidate the fish.....

 

[hbosman]

I do a 50% water change before I add new fish. That gives the fish time to acclimate to higher co2 levels in the time it takes the drop checker to turn yellow. I do double check with a regular ph test kit as well since it takes time for the drop checker to reflect current levels.

 

[papwalker]

Don't you find it odd about "training the fish for high CO2". As other people (or at least
most other people) don't have to do this. They would just put fish in before
CO2 injection begins and that's it. If you have to train your fish for that,
I think your problem isn't not enough CO2.

This too much emphasis in CO2 have made me sad. Even the magic wording
"bump up CO2 till fish stress and dial down a bit". Yes, Amano admits he used to
kill fish by CO2 but that was (were) by accident.

I agree, fish are just disposable cups to some 'aquarists' (I use the term loosely)
The spout stuff like 'fish are OK below 25ppm'
Rubbish.
What fish? Everything from Angles to Zambezi tiger fish?
Scientific aquaculture literature tells a different story.
But it's a fad - shiny new gadgets.
I appreciate beautiful tanks running high CO2. Just don't torture fish in them is all.