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Temporary CO2 use

3K views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  michifish 
#1 ·
Im sure this has been answered before but i looked and couldnt find anything so here i am.. also might be a dumb question but im relatively new to all this so bear with me..

If i were to inject co2 to help grow the plants to the size i wanted and then stopped injecting it would the plants retain their size and color or would the natural co2 not be enough to maintain the size and cause them to die off?

Also what if i were to have a semi mature dirted tank say 5 months old when everything is relatively balanced and i began to inject co2 to the desired size and then stopped, would the dirt be able to produce enough co2 to maintain it?
 
#2 ·
To your second question, no. Unless you dump a dead body in there :)


It depends on the plants. Easy peasy ones like baby tears, anacharis and vals will just stop growing ridiculously fast.

Other easy stems like ludwigia brevipes or rotala rotundifolia will grow slower and with reduced new growth. The existing large leaves might stay intact, but it would look very odd.

Crypts will inevitably melt, but will inevitably regrow.

Depending on your lighting, intermediate plants like blyxa japonica will experience die off. They will come back, but severly reduced in size and growth speed.

Paris Hilton plants like ludwigia glandulosa will most likely perish, especially if they are in a tank with less demanding plants.
 
#3 ·
To your second question, no. Unless you dump a dead body in there :)


It depends on the plants. Easy peasy ones like baby tears, anacharis and vals will just stop growing ridiculously fast.

Other easy stems like ludwigia brevipes or rotala rotundifolia will grow slower and with reduced new growth. The existing large leaves might stay intact, but it would look very odd.

Crypts will inevitably melt, but will inevitably regrow.

Depending on your lighting, intermediate plants like blyxa japonica will experience die off. They will come back, but severly reduced in size and growth speed.
Basically this. New growth on some of the more demanding plants will not be as good and it will look weird. Old growth will most likely stay the same.

Paris Hilton plants like ludwigia glandulosa will most likely perish, especially if they are in a tank with less demanding plants.
lol
 
#4 ·
People sometimes do this to establish "carpet" plants. Either with a dry start, during the transmission to submersion, or when starting a planted tank in the traditional way. Use CO2 temporarily (sometimes really blasting it, if there are no fish in the tank yet), then stop once the carpet is filled in.
 
#5 ·
You can get by doing this with plants that dont need CO2 to begin with, like crypts, swords, java ferns, etc. And it can also be useful to carpet faster some of the less demanding carpeting type plants like dhg and stauro, etc.

But colorful stems or anything that generally needs CO2 will quickly revert back to a poor state. You'll also need to drastically reduce the light for a while once the co2 stops to avoid an algae nightmare.
 
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