Just wondering does this happen everyday in people's tanks? Mine does not seem to do it very often. I dose kno3 1.5t and kh2p04 1.5t every other day, and on the off days i dose .5t of csm+b have my c02 set at 30bpm. Granite i have only started to do this the last week, but i thought once i started to do this reguraly the plants would just pearl. Do i need to be more patient or am i doing something wrong?

Do you mean 30ppm?

how do i know if my c02 is at 30ppm i thought when i read a post earlier it mean to set my c02 at 30 bubbles a min i take it that is not the case.

Read my Guide. It will help you a lot.

i checked out your site i think im really low if i read it right my kh when i tested it was 5.6 and my ph is 7.4 so if i read right that gives me a c02 of 6.0ppm. I know if i add baking soda it will raise my kh but how much to add i dont know?

Adding baking soda will raise your kh, but that will not increase you co2 because you ph will rise as well. The only way to raise your co2 level is to get more co2 into the water.

6ppm of CO2 is not a lot... You should shoot for 30ppm CO2.

Your KH is fine. You need to add more CO2. To get up to 20 ppm (maybe still low), shoot for a pH of 6.9.

Edit: DANG! Two Ninja posts. I am too slow!

so do need to just adjust the needle valve a little bit or do i need to do it a lot. I guess should i be able to count the bubbles in the bubble counter or should they be flying by.

Do about 1-3bps and see how that works.

You should increase your bubbles slowly and measure the Co2 levels with each change.

Example:

30bpm is giving you 6ppm Co2.

Increase to 40bpm and then recalculate your ppm of Co2 to see the change.

If your change was very small, then you can increase the bubble rate by more than 10bpm the next time, maybe by 15bpm increments or more.

If your new ppm is still too low, continue increasing the bpm by increments, measure the changes, etc. until you hit your Co2 target.

Bubbles per minute is only useful to you because it allows you to visually confirm that the amount of Co2 you are injecting isn't changing. For example, if I walk by my reactor and notice that it's firing 2 bubbles per second then I know my needle valve must have slipped or failed because I haven't been injecting that much.

However, if I set up a new tank of a different size or with a different reactor or water source I couldn't assume that injecting the same bpm into it would yield the same Co2 as in my original tank, because water chem, volume, plant load, lighting levels, diffusion efficiency etc determine how much Co2 has to be added to get the levels in the water to a certain ppm.

It's like looking out a window of a car. You can't tell your mph by how fast the grass wizzes by. But if you notice how fast the grass wizzes by when you are going 50mph, then you can determine that you are going slower than 50 if the same grass wizzes by more slowly. But it still doesn't let you know your new speed. Are you now going 45mph or 38 mph? It is only helpful in a relative manner.

Mine almost never pearls, at least noticeably. When I had 60w of T-12 over my 20g a few years back and DIY Co2, the plants pearled like crazy (swords, wisteria, java fern, etc). Now with 110w of PCs over the same 20g & pressurized Co2 between 30-40ppm, I rarely see anything. /shrug

Maybe you have a limiting nutrient in there or maybe bad bulb spectrum.

I use DIY CO2 with 108 watts over a 30 gallon and i get a bunch of pearling. This was after i switched out of actinic bulbs into 10000k bulbs.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...v/macranda.jpg

I thought i had 128 watts when i originally got it but it was only 108 which bummed me when i found out but i guess it still works fine. I think i would get more output out of my duel 30w tubes if i used odno.

fatbysl,
how are you diffusing your co2 into the water? This has proven to be the limiting factor in getting my co2 up, and also what has prevented pearling most of the time!

its getting to the tank through a pump that shoots water out into the tank.