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Large tank Owners, how do you diffuse CO2? 60+ Gallons

2423 Views 10 Replies 9 Participants Last post by  2wheelsx2
Large tank Owners! How do you diffuse CO2 into your tank?
Reactor? Diffuser?

What is your diffusion method? I want find a method to diffuse CO2 into my tank, but not at an expensive cost. I was thinking one or two "airwoods" (Wooden airstone).


Along with that, with your diffusion method, how much CO2 (PPM) do you have in your tank, and how many BPM, regardless of whether you have a big bubble, a small bubble, or a medium bubble.
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I use a inline reactor. Similar to Rex griggs reactor.

I live on the edge at the moment I disconnected my bubble counter because it would leak if it wasnt situated perfectly. I used a drop checker with 4 kh water that tells me when I have ~30ppm.
I already have a Hydor Inline heater on my filter. I know the heater does very little, if not, nothing to the water flow, but I do want to keep the water flow high as possible. Could I possibly stick a powerhead in my tank and have the "airwood" under the powerhead intake, or stick the "airwood" under my filter intake?
inline diffuser that i made myself. it was really cheap too: 2 feet of 1.5inch diameter pvc, endcaps, and brass airline nipples. total was like 15 dollars
:) I have a Hydor inline heater as well. Here is how I set it up. Its not very clean, but it works.

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I already have a Hydor Inline heater on my filter. I know the heater does very little, if not, nothing to the water flow, but I do want to keep the water flow high as possible. Could I possibly stick a powerhead in my tank and have the "airwood" under the powerhead intake, or stick the "airwood" under my filter intake?
I've done the diffuser under the filter intake before and never had a problem. But then I saw a post that someone else did that, got too much air in the filter, and it burned out. So now I put the diffuser under the spray bar. It doesn't work very well (esp. in a 120 gallon), but I'm not looking for high CO2 levels either. You could do this with a powerhead since they're a lot cheaper than a canister filter. And if you try the limewood airstone, let me know how it works. Neither ceramic diffuser that I've owned did a good job of making really fine bubbles.
I use a limewood airstone, under the intake of my canister on my 120gal. Never had an issue yet. I'm running about 2-3 bps with no visible CO2 coming from the spraybar - unlike when I ran in into the intake of my powerhead. I don't use a drop checker for CO2 levels, but my pH usually runs 6.0 (sometimes 6.2) with a KH of 2-4.
2 inline reactors outputs on either end of the tank. I'm now running about 8 BPS (4 into each). Plants are happy, fish are doing well, BBA finally at bay.
I just set up a 150 a couple weeks ago. I built my own reactor out of 2.5" and 3" and 30" tall clear acrylic tubing. Spread out the outflow through out the lenght of the tank (60").

:)
On my 75g I use a Rena Micro Bubbler placed inside the prefilter of a powerhead. Produces a nice CO2 mist. Pics and details here.

For my big tank I am soon to setup (240g) I plan on simply using the same (but larger) Rena Micro Bubblers placed near the return pump intake (x2), but I've not got it setup yet.
2 Rhinox 2000 diffusers run off one tank with a manifold and two needle valves. This is on a 6 foot long 125 gallon tank.
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