CO2 chart vs. Fish

its more then needed for plants but your fish can handle the co2 amount, i would lower it to about 25-30 ppm just to be on the safe side.

Fish are tolerant of CO2 at that concentration and even higher.

The fish probably aren't gasping because you don't have that much CO2 in the water. That chart doesn't work at all accurately for typical aquarium water, only for water that has nothing in it that affects pH except CO2 and carbonates. The chart normally gives much too high a CO2 concentration when used with a typical aquarium.

Mine's 55-70 ppm, my fish are fine.

So should I not even bother any more with charts and tests and drop checkers, etc., and just let the fish be the judge?

Smeagol said:

So should I not even bother any more with charts and tests and drop checkers, etc., and just let the fish be the judge?

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Yes! Drop checkers are useful and can help you get close. Watch your fish..... turn it up little by little (daily and slowly) until you notice them get edgy then back off a hair. Some fish will flash. Kind of a quick sideways dart well before they start to gasp.

When everything is right you plants and fish both will be very happy.

Simply not possible to write up a chart to cover all the water types that it is meant to cover. Accepting as totally true most of the things we use is really risky if we don't watch for unusual things to happen. If you take ten CCR reports from across the country and compare them, you can get an idea. Any chemical reaction may be changed when other chemicals are present so there really is no way to get an accurate readout of what will happen in all cases. The water reports only cover the items which are tested. Not shown are the hundreds of other items that are not tested or regulated.
I do fish as a primary and plants second so if I see fish in distress, I back off.

plantbrain said:

Mine's 55-70 ppm, my fish are fine.

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But, you are the only one I know of who has the equipment needed to accurately measure how much CO2 is in the water. One thing I am 110% sure of is you don't use a drop checker to do it:hihi: