Diy Co2

[Kiran]

I am looking at setting up DIY CO2 but I am a little apprehensive.
There are a few questions I need to ask

1) What do you do at night. I know you can't 'turn it off' and taking out is stupid but won't the water have too much CO2 in at night if the plants don't need any to photosynthesize?

2) In terms of pH, how much does it normally affect it?

3) What is a pH crash?

4) anyone know any good pH test kits from the UK?

5) anyone want to give me any advice. I really wanna go with the DIY as I don't have the money to go pressurized, but I am worried it could turn out horribly and I don't wanna kill my fish.

Thanks

Kiran

[Sponsors]

[Hoppy]

I don't know what size your tank is, but if it is 20 gallon or bigger, it isn't likely that you will overdo the CO2 with DIY system. If you think that could happen you can put an air stone in the tank and run it at night only - to add surface movement to outgas the CO2. CO2 drops the PH about 1 ph unit if you are adding about 30-40 ppm of CO2. You can check this by taking a sample of water from the tank, letting it sit at least 4 hours in a shallow glass, then comparing the PH in that water to that in the tank. The difference will be about 1 ph unit if you have 30-40 ppm CO2. If your KH is below 3 degrees, it is possible to add so much CO2 that the PH drops much too far - that is PH crash, and it is usually only a problem with pressurized CO2 systems. PH test kits are, in my opinion, pretty accurate no matter who makes it. The inaccuracies are largely due to the difficulty in comparing the color of the test tube of water to the color chart provided.