New 55 gallon need co2 reactor/diffuser counter help

cor dit questions
55g moderately planted so far 7-8 plants or bunches
We haven't even finished with our fish additions, going on a month or so now, stable everything. But need correct co2 we can make and afford, very handy hubby loving it, but were confused so much info out here. We love rex grigg but his reacor is confusing.
so far only
2 corys
1 dojo loach
1 conga tetra
1 male betta
2 a pair or leage swards
We want a tight school too and maybe some botia loches or peacock gudgeons



We are doing the DIY 1 soda bottle directly into tank with round airstone

We've read this is ineffective ? Bulles go up, not absorbed ?
So do we JUST do a bell, and counter, or reactor ?
We are just running a side top filter, no canister yet, but thought of making our own, is this possible.
OR Can we run the hose form the yeast without the airsone into the top/side filter and our the retutn even though it's not a consiter ?

Also does the bubble counter really tell us what we need to know for a 55 gallo, or do we need a test kit of some kind too ?

We'd like the best DIY co2 for our planted tank as amazons are growing brown algae and turning yellow. We're amping up our lights from 110w 80 of full spectrim and 35 pink grow..to our new an improved 265 w 4 blue compact floureces with 6500K
thanks for your help, we love it, and are haing fun, but whre to start ?

diy co2 55g

new to forums like this and messaging how do i move mod ? to get more responses ?

we ran 1 bottle only with airstone, and now our ph is the top level for our tester a clear 7.8 or above much higher, we assumed it was the co2 ? could it be something else, we figured it was so removed the airstone ?
Seems effective, when we take it off the are stone it's one bubble per second
i know it said without a diffuser or reactor not much co2 would really be absorbed, but maybe it is ?

Could it be that we don't have enough plants to use up what we are adding ?

We do have brown algae growing on Amazons, we need some ottos for the glass, and were about to amp the light today, hope we don't get a bloom ? ahh this is fun but it's a lot

do we need a counter attached to the airstone before it goes into the water ?

how do i do this ? thanks

I just posted what HAS happened, but I guess we could be wrong, but our ph is 7.8 or above and was around 7 or 7.2, so we removed our airstone, we thought it was super effective to raise the ph ? No ? i thought we still needed a reactor or bell to make it absorbe well. Maybe the airsote directly form the bottle is disffusing it, even though the bubble go right up, they do flow into the retun flo so it carries them a little way ? We were going to add more plants like cobomba that don't seem to nee much but we wanted some ground cover and low glasses and our Amazons are still yellow so i know they need more ? Maybe the ph is just high and the co2 isn't really in the water to help ?

Help ?