Co2 diffuser question

[Pancake]

Hi everyone,

I'm really new at this hobby so bare with my stupidity.

I have been reading anything i can find on co2 systems lately and have decided to take the plunge. I bought my regulator today,my metering valve is in the mail and I built a bubble counter out of a tube and a couple check valves I had.

Now I am deciding about what to buy or build for my diffuser.Would it be possible to use my return water from my filstar xp2(also in the mail)to power a co2 reactor?

The way I would do it would just to bleed the co2 bubbles into the output line from my filter and then have some coarse material placed in the line for the bubbles to hang on just basically like a power reactor.The reason I ask is I really would like to avoid having to add more electrical devises and also just objects to hide in my aquarium.

I hope I make sense enough to get help hehe thanks in advance.



Pancake

[Buck]

I use the XP2 and all I do is strap the CO2 line to the "intake" of the filter and let the filter do the work. It sucks the bubble , churns it up and spits out CO2 enriched water... :hehe:
It works awesome.
Your filter is now the "reactor" and there is no need to add anything.

My bubble counter is me looking at the end of the tubing strapped to the intake :hehe:

Let the rich guys spend the money... I just wanted CO2...

[Pancake]

I was not sure if the co2 bubbles would cause any kind of problem with the filter pump.Thanks for the help that will be so much easier than adding more junk to my tank.

[aquaphish]

I don't really get the bubble counter thing. I know that many of you probable use them, but who cares how many bubbles your reactor is dissolving into the water column. The most improtant thing is to have a level of CO2 of around 15-25 ppm's and not the amount of bubbles!!! The saturation levels can vary and by just counting the bubbles you really are not measuring the level of CO2 saturation.

Any comments on this?

[Captain]

The bubble counter helps when adjusting the amount of CO2 going in. My reactor is not clear so I would have no way to judge how much CO2 is going in without waiting to check pH. Small changes to the needle valve, in my case, has a pretty big affect on the amount of CO2 going in. At least with the bubble counter I have a quick method to judge how much CO2 I am adding.

[jart]

i don't have my co2 set up yet (still in the planning stages). your comment about the validity of having a bubble counter makes sense. however, would not such a device serve as a "double check" for your system? in other words, if your co2 level dropped from 20 to 10 ppm, your bubble counter could tell you that the drop in co2 must be due to something else OTHER than a leak? am i off base here?

i have been planning on getting a fluval, after much reading (for the simple fact that none of the lfs sell anything else, and i'd like to have rapid access to parts, should the need arise). i was actually planning on asking what was asked in the original post; that is, can you use your filter outlet somehow as a reactor (much in the way that pancake proposed, i think it may have been rex that suggested using those plastic mesh dish cleaner thingys as the "coarse material")? some people have experienced varying levels of problems using the intake as a reactor (ie noise, at the worst, pump failure), so perhaps this is best avoided. maybe the renas are immune to this problem? i'd be more than interested in your thoughts on this...