CO2 with no dosing?

Plants will only grow as fast as the limiting nutrient is supplied. So, a simplified list of what plants need is:
Light > CO2 > Macros > Micros

At present you have low-medium light, no CO2, lots of macros and micros from the aquasoil, so using the above principal you will see that by adding CO2 you will supply more of the currently limiting nutrient to your tank thereby helping the plants grow faster and more healthily.

In a nutshell, adding CO2 to your setup will be beneficial and will not cause issues.

Awesome, thank you for the quick rely.

So not dosing ferts with CO will not encourage algae in my case? I am asking cause I see slight bba growing on my moss, that is why I am looking into DIY co2. Lights are only on 6 hours currently.

The argument over what exactly causes BBA to grow and not grow has been going on for some time. There is no clear 100% proven method to staying BBA free. You can however kill the evil stuff using flourish excel or gluteraldehyde. Use a syringe to suck up some excel then apply it very slowly directly to the BBA underwater. You can dose 2-3x higher than the daily dose (not the initial dose). It will turn the BBA red within 24 hours, then the algae turns gray and decays away over the next week or two.

CO2 will unquestionably help your plants to grow better. What exactly it does to algae nobody really knows with any accuracy.

I can account that I used Co2(diy though) ,with only Fe+traces dosing.
No macros whatsoever ,except some K which was included in the mix..

My tap water is practically phosphate free ,but I wasn't aware of how things work.In addition to lights kept close ,final the result was BBA and staghorn algae ,after a period of good growth.

The fatal flaw with DIY CO2 is the inability to keep the CO2 concentration in the water the same every day, day after day. When we don't do that it seems to trigger BBA to start growing. I had that experience with a couple of tank setups, so I just use Excel now.

Hoppy said:

The fatal flaw with DIY CO2 is the inability to keep the CO2 concentration in the water the same every day, day after day. When we don't do that it seems to trigger BBA to start growing. I had that experience with a couple of tank setups, so I just use Excel now.

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I also tried Excel ,but ,even at half the recommended dosing ,it killed a lot of my Red Cherry in my 10g .Some people say they have no problems ,even when overdosing.

Sorry to kind of high jack thread, but Has anyone tried the "professional" DIY CO2? They go by the model D201/301/501 on eBay..It uses citric acid which is suppose to be more consistent than yeast? I was hoping this will fix the fluctuations with other DIY CO2. Anyone have any experience or input in regards to this?

cape said:

Sorry to kind of high jack thread, but Has anyone tried the "professional" DIY CO2? They go by the model D201/301/501 on eBay..It uses citric acid which is suppose to be more consistent than yeast? I was hoping this will fix the fluctuations with other DIY CO2. Anyone have any experience or input in regards to this?

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I,saw a thread a few days ago,that was setting one up. They are on here try search

-Chris

Found it if anyone is interested.

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=598650