CO2 through powerhead

Puffs are fine. I had puffs coming out of a powerhead in my EI tank and everything worked quite well.

The sound of the puffs annoyed me occasionally, since the tank was in my bedroom, but I got used to it.

 

the sound would be much smaller if using a needle wheel pump since it has more blades inside than 6 blades only for conventional powerhead.

you can also use a syringe needle (stainless steel) adapted to the Co2 pipe, and let the powerhead "suck" the smaller bubbles from the syringe needle if you could mount the Co2 pipe on the water inlet of the pump.

Most needle wheel pumps have their own "air sucking" mount, so that would make the mounting Co2 pipe on them easier. The problem is that the "sucking" force is so great that if you set your bubble counter at 2/s, the powerhead may increase it to 10 bubbles/second. So a syringle needle can help to check this sucking speed.

 

Scott,

My tank was 50G and I only had a 180gph (about 700lph) pump for my CO2. I was doing about 3 bps in my CO2 bubble counter. I had good flow in my tank and the CO2 powerhead's flow actually mixed in very well with the flow from my canister filter. You'll need about 6 bps (or a little more) to keep your CO2 at 30 ppm or so -- assuming you don't have a water fall or the like removing your CO2. It's hard to count that fast (6 bps), so you'll probably have to guess.

 

needle wheel powerhead has its 14 blades in stick form (another version is brush like), so when they chop Co2, the sound is much smaller than flat blade of normal powerhead with 6 blades.

I may say that needle wheel powerheads chop Co2 better than DIY type of needle wheel powerhead, and quieter in both ways.

You need to locate smaller ones (around 10W) to put it into the tank. If you get one with 20W (brush type), it would be too powerful to use in tank, and you have to put it outside the tank in connection with canisters (in condition it is water/dry type).

 

For CO2 injection it's more efficient. If you splash around some soapy water with a flat paddle you'll get some bubbles. Now if you splash around that same water with a strainer you get lots more and smaller bubbles. It's the smaller bubbles we're after. Smaller bubbles means they hang around longer in the tank and/or dissolve faster. The fact that it usually ends up quieter is just an added bonus.

-
S

 

many smaller bubbles of the same volume gas has a greater surface area for solution.