New CO2, bubbles stopping

[betty]

Hi!

Hoping someone else is up. Hooked up my first CO2 systems yesterday afternoon and it is still on the kitchen counter. Top Gun from Aqua botanic. I turn the valve to increase the bubbles and after 10 minutes there are 0 bubbles. I do it again and again with same result. There are no leaks. Is this normal? I guess I assumed I would plug it in and adjust for bubbles and it would work. How many bubbles should I aim for on a 65 gallon fairly heavily planted tank? Thanks. Betty

 

[anonapersona]

ask at Aquabotanic board

Not sure of your equipment, but call Aquabotanic or post on that board. I'll guess that the main tank valve is not fully open, but I'm not sure about that.

Generally, you hook up dual valve regulator using the plastic disk washer from the CO2 supplier, tighten well. Fill bubble counter with water or whatever. Hook up line to fish tank and reactor. Then open tank valve completely (this is to set some sort of sealing ring in the unit -- I think). Needle valve is closed at this point. Plug in solenoid, it opens when power is on to it. Now adjust needle valve to get a slow stream of bubbles, maybe 1 per second or less to start.

I took my time getting the bubble rate up, you need to test pH and KH and know what your target pH is. Better to go slow than to OD and stress the fish, they need a little time to adjust to the CO2 levels.

I started at 6 bubbles per minute, eventually going to 30 or 40 or something, I'm not even sure of the rate, it may be more than 1 per second even. If you turn it off at night you can go a bit higher on the rate in the day, you just have to test the pH to see what works best.