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Hello All,
I recently switched to a reactor on my 40 breeder because I didn't like the soda pop tank. I'm really happy with the results and the clearer looking water, but I've been scratching my head over it for a while. It seems like my co2 injection rate needs to be cranked way up in order to get good saturation in the tank.
My dKH is roughly 5-5.5 and off-gassed pH is 8.2. To get high levels of co2, without stressing the livestock, I drop my pH to about 6.5-6.6. Plants are growing fairly well - I did a rescape on the tank not long ago and got a good deal of BBA afterwards, that seems to have ended and plants are mostly algae free again. Woohoo!
The bubble counter is running at easily 5-7 BPS, I can't accurately count it, but it's really flowing. I've done leak checks with soapy water/Simple Green and didn't detect any gas leaks on my regulator, needle valve, pressure gauges, check vale, etc. Everything seems good. Bubble rate is consistent.
But it just seems like I'm having to really pump out the co2 to get good saturation. One of the benefits of a reactor, I thought, was you were actually able to turn down the co2 to get the same levels of saturation vs an in-line atomizer or in-tank diffuser (I was using the former before the reactor).
Any thoughts or insight? I thought about maybe putting a bazooka atomizer designed for in-tank use inside the reactor in the hopes with helping dissolution, but then I thought the bubbles might be too fine and simply get pushed out into the tank.
The reactor is made by NilocG, it's 24" tall and 2" in diameter, the canister filter being used is a Fluval 407. Another thought I had was to remove the bio balls that came with the reactor, but I don't know how that could help with efficiency of dissolution.
I recently switched to a reactor on my 40 breeder because I didn't like the soda pop tank. I'm really happy with the results and the clearer looking water, but I've been scratching my head over it for a while. It seems like my co2 injection rate needs to be cranked way up in order to get good saturation in the tank.
My dKH is roughly 5-5.5 and off-gassed pH is 8.2. To get high levels of co2, without stressing the livestock, I drop my pH to about 6.5-6.6. Plants are growing fairly well - I did a rescape on the tank not long ago and got a good deal of BBA afterwards, that seems to have ended and plants are mostly algae free again. Woohoo!
The bubble counter is running at easily 5-7 BPS, I can't accurately count it, but it's really flowing. I've done leak checks with soapy water/Simple Green and didn't detect any gas leaks on my regulator, needle valve, pressure gauges, check vale, etc. Everything seems good. Bubble rate is consistent.
But it just seems like I'm having to really pump out the co2 to get good saturation. One of the benefits of a reactor, I thought, was you were actually able to turn down the co2 to get the same levels of saturation vs an in-line atomizer or in-tank diffuser (I was using the former before the reactor).
Any thoughts or insight? I thought about maybe putting a bazooka atomizer designed for in-tank use inside the reactor in the hopes with helping dissolution, but then I thought the bubbles might be too fine and simply get pushed out into the tank.
The reactor is made by NilocG, it's 24" tall and 2" in diameter, the canister filter being used is a Fluval 407. Another thought I had was to remove the bio balls that came with the reactor, but I don't know how that could help with efficiency of dissolution.