Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
Just a quick quistion
I would recommend using the 2 bottles for the size of your tank. There are also other advantages to using 2 bottles
you can change one at a time a week or 2 apart and its better for sustaining the flow of CO2 as it takes time for the yeast to start to produce co2. Your comments about insufficient pressure to drive an air stone are correct too, the pressure from the DIY reactor is not high at all. I have used several systems myself and the 2 bottle set-up is the best by a long way. Also using a third smaller bottle as a trap / bubble coulter is a good idea. It means that if you get overspill from one of the reactor bottles, it does not end up in your tank. Typically its only foam that will go through the airline into the bubble counter so it will not carry on to your tank, however, if you don’t have the trap there, you can end up with a lot of foam going into your main tank and the yeast / sugar mix will foul the water rapidly possibly killing your fish too.Here is a thread with a lot of debate on the pros and cons of the system
www.irishfishkeepers.com/index.php/fforu...5099-diy-c02-reactorI will try to post some pics of the set-up I use later.
Cheers,
Bill.
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you are right, there is no turning the CO2 off at night. I use an airpump on a timer to come on an hour before lights off and go off 2 hours before lights off. Find it works a treat
It increases the surface agitation and gas exchange rate so no problems with excessive co2. I have also tried just running the co2 with nothing else in the way of increased surface agitation with no adverse effects. If you go this was, you do need a reasonable buffering capacity in the tank to prevent a ph crash as the co2 is constantly disolving in the water. That said, the co2 levels dont seem to get excessively high anyway.I think the only risk of generating excessive levels of co2 in the tank is if you use a reactor which is on the output of a filter or powerhead. This gives almost a 100% co2 absorption rate and could have a detremental impact of the stock in the tank. However, if you use a co2 flipper rather than a diffuser, then you should not run into any problems.
Let me know if you want any more detail.
Cheers,
Bill.
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