CO2 in a brackish tank?

loaches r cool

loaches r cool

Snail Terminator
Feb 15, 2006
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Gahanna, Ohio
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After a quick search here it doesnt seem that CO2 injection has ever been mentioned in the brackish forum. I was wondering if its ever been done or not? I am going to try to have lots of plants in my new mild brackish tank I am setting up, but I am hopping to do with just flourish excell. It has 2 x 65W CF over a 45G bowfront. Thats over 4wpg assuming the CF lights are about 50% more effecient than the t12 bulbs the wpg rule was based on.
 
I think the reason it never comes up is that the list of plants that thrive in brackish is so short, no one does heavily planted brackish tanks, at least not to the point of needing CO2. If you could get it planted heavily enough, I don't see any reason that CO2 would not work. I know inmine I use aragonite so the buffering capability of the water would be plenty, one less thing to worry about there.
 
Yeah, I am not really sure if I will try to plant it 'heavily' or just moderately. But even if you only find 1 species of plant that works, you could still plant 50 of them I suppose. I guess I am more worried about algae than how fast the plants will grow, heck I might even be better off just unhooking 1 of the bulbs to get the light down. I dont know, the tank is just getting setup so these are all just ideas and random thoughts. I did decide to go with aragonite, if one used co2 with this would it disolve out the buffer thats in it (I mean to the point that it has to be replaced)? I have always used backing soda for KH so I am not really sure how the crushed coral works - thats pretty much what aragonite is correct?

FWIW my plant list so far will include a bumch of jungle val along the back and partly on the sides, java fern on various rocks and driftwood, and a few banana plants up front. I am open to any other suggestions.
 
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Do you live near a brackish water area? IF so consider collecting native plants.

I woudl also assume since most brackish tanks can't support the plants readily available for freshwater it hasn't really been an issue. I can't see why flourish excell wouldn't be a decent place to start thoigh.

Also how would CO2 affect the pH and SG fo your brackish tank. You may need to add more buffer to keep the tank stable. It could be a very tricky endevour. Best of luck.
 
Well, I dont live by any brackish rivers (BTW location is listed underneath my avatar). I will definatly be doing the flourish excell, only would I try CO2 if my plants werent doing well and I get an algae problem. Hopefully I wont need to get another CO2 setup... this thread is just kinda 'research' on the topic, not that I really plan on doing it. I am not too worried about co2 and the buffer unless it gets 'used up' since all my brackish fish currently are at a nuetral ph without really any buffer in there, it will be more of a change by introducing them into the new aragonite tank (which I will do very carefully). I actually planted it just today, got 10 jungle val, 10 java ferns (small ones from my other tanks), 2 banana plants, 1 crinum crinkle onion. All of these suppose to be able to go light brackish. Plus I was thinking about trying some others from my freshwater tank - just to see. Like I have a lot of dwarf sag I use as a groundcover. Anyone know if the dwarf sag will tolarate ~.005 sg? Also was thinking about an anubius, not sure which type I have it was sold as 'misc'.
 
I've got some dwarf sag in my brackish tank. Growth has been almost zero (a few runners) but they are hanging in there. Java moss is doing well. Bacopa does quite good too. My tank is pretty much overgrown with java fern with a lot of adventitous shoots sprouting up. I dose traces a few times a week. No macros except occassional NO3 if needed. The salt mix contains enough of the other elements to keep things good. SG is at 1.004.
 
seems to me that 4 wpg is a lot of light, it may cause algea problems with out co2 ?

my 2 cents
 
Thats pretty much my main concern. But just looking at the light issue, would it be better to have the extra light and a good dose of Flourish Excel or say unplug one of the lights? For right now I atleast replaced the blue marine bulb with a 6700k daylight bulb, and the other bulb is a 12,000k daylight bulb that I am leaving in there.

Is it possible to dose a higher than recomended amount of Flourish Excell? And if so, how much more is safe? Right now I have been doing a capfull every day... will have to calculate it out and see in the long run how much the flourish will cost, heck it might be cheaper to do co2 if I can get the parts cheap or split off my tank going to the 75G.
 
yep, it's safe to "overdose" Excel. It's not CO2 so will not suffocate your fish, and is also not dissipated through surface agitation. It does however degrade after about a day. So it's recommended to dose at least every other day, depending on how much growth you want.

I heard interesting rumors about Excel being an algecide at higher doses, and tried it. I have a few spots of black beard algae on my older Anubias leaves. I spot-treated by squirting Excel directly to those parts with a syringe. A few days later, the algae is gone! It started turning red and getting soft, and today I noticed it's completely gone like it melted :) Yay!

I don't know that you'll have hair-type algae in a brackish tank, you'll most likely see red algae (rhodophyta) I think.
 
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