I have a 4' 85gal tank I'm "practicing" this on in preparation for my 6' 100gal (being set up) tank which will be my "serious" planted tank.
Instead of soda bottles I'm using a 5gal stainless steel home brew...thingy I borrowed off a friend who is into that, I figured the larger volume may be productive enough to do away with the expense of pressurised CO2.
I used an empty peanut butter container as the gas seperator and a gravel vac full of bioballs for the powered reactor that runs off a T on the return line from the sump through a ball valve. I had intended to use the gas input to the reactor as bubble count indicator but it appears there's more CO2 entering the reactor than it can dissolve, obviously some tuning needed...
Now this tank is set up with a wet/dry sump so I've got too much gas exchange (though I've tried to minimize it as much as possible) but I still have enough CO2 dissolved to lower the ph from ~7.5 to ~7 (KH=3 buffered with coral peices from the tap water KH of 1) so it looks like it's working.
Any comments/suggestions? (keep in mind the intended tank for this will be sealed (more or less) and using canister filters.)
Instead of soda bottles I'm using a 5gal stainless steel home brew...thingy I borrowed off a friend who is into that, I figured the larger volume may be productive enough to do away with the expense of pressurised CO2.
I used an empty peanut butter container as the gas seperator and a gravel vac full of bioballs for the powered reactor that runs off a T on the return line from the sump through a ball valve. I had intended to use the gas input to the reactor as bubble count indicator but it appears there's more CO2 entering the reactor than it can dissolve, obviously some tuning needed...
Now this tank is set up with a wet/dry sump so I've got too much gas exchange (though I've tried to minimize it as much as possible) but I still have enough CO2 dissolved to lower the ph from ~7.5 to ~7 (KH=3 buffered with coral peices from the tap water KH of 1) so it looks like it's working.
Any comments/suggestions? (keep in mind the intended tank for this will be sealed (more or less) and using canister filters.)
