# overdoing it on the DIY CO2



## Auban (Aug 8, 2010)

20121215_132637.mp4 video by sjveck | Photobucket

the fish recovered when i pulled the CO2.


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## rtmaston (Jul 14, 2012)

what are you using to know how much co2 you have?you need something to tell.here is a link for what I use.hope it helps.Amazon.com: Fluval CO2 Indicator Kit: Pet Supplies


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## Auban (Aug 8, 2010)

so far, just the ph/kh calculation, which put it at a little over 60 ppm. I have ordered a drop checker and will soon take readings with it.

the ram in the video was not acclimatized to high levels of CO2, and I have very little surface agitation on this tank, which is part of the reason it was stressed. I pulled one line and slowly brought the CO2 levels back up and now it is doing fine. its easier to control a pressurized system. acclimatizing a fish to DIY CO2 involves slowly increasing the diffusion and lowering the surface agitation. with a pressurized system you just regulate it.


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## rtmaston (Jul 14, 2012)

a drop checker is a good idea


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

A drop checker will not show 60ppm. It will show no color change based off of the ph/kh chart. The chart is useless to try and predict your levels with injecting CO2.

The one thing I notice about that tank is very little to no surface movement. If you improved that and got better gas exchange you could run more bottles than that on there and get CO2 levels higher than what you had there. Without the drop checker though, hard to say what you had.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Just read your whole post this time....

I don't do anything different when acclimating fish. Same old drip acclimation method, with no change in CO2 adjustments and never had an issue. I have pressurized on 3 tanks.


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## Auban (Aug 8, 2010)

well, the rams needed to be acclimated. they were doing fine on one bottle, but the second bottle hit them a little too hard. right now they are both doing fine on two bottles. 
our kh here is 210 mg/l and the CO2 drops the ph to between 6.4 and 6.6, depending on how the bottles are doing. from the tap, or in the tank with no CO2, the ph is 8.4.

im not sure what you mean by color change with the ph/kh chart. i dont have a drop checker yet... 

when we were in north carolina, i ran one bottle on my 65g. when we moved here, i didnt set it back up for a while. 

can you tell from this pic when i stopped using CO2? poor guy was dissolving...


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Just saying that drop checkers are about color and you have blue, green, and yellow with green being your target, but green only signifies that you have about 30ppm of CO2 in your tank. No matter what the ph/kh chart says you have, if you take your value of 60, the drop checker will still be blue.


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## Auban (Aug 8, 2010)

i thought that was what you meant, but when you put both drop checker and ph/kh chart in the same sentence it threw me. i dont really trust the chart. it makes no difference to me what the number is, since the actual concentration required to gas a fish is variable. even a drop checker wont tell me when my fish will start hurting.

its only use is as an indication.


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## rtmaston (Jul 14, 2012)

my drop checker does turn green


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

rtmaston said:


> my drop checker does turn green


Not on a DIY. If it does, your DC is giving you the wrong indication. No way to attain it unless you are running multiple bottles. It would take 2 just for a 20g. One will not do it, unless maybe at the first few days of CO2 production.


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## rtmaston (Jul 14, 2012)

I am running 2 bottles of 2 liters


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

rtmaston said:


> I am running 2 bottles of 2 liters


For what size tank?


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