Planted Aquarium maintenance ?

Jack Middleton

You may have DIY CO2 and a reactor for better diffusion, but ultimately it depends on lighting, and with 1.5WPG of T5's DIY CO2 is not up to the job

lionhead

as you can see in the pixs, from the bottle to the reactor, on the back of the reactor is a small power head, on the front, there is a chamber , the gas is pulled in it and the power head creats a tornado, mixing 99% of the gas with the water an it's dispenced out the front bottom through a small gap.....needs to be cleaned once a week....there is also a product to mix with gravel that works great. I have it in my tank. It's called FIRST LAYER PURE LATERITE, 1oz per gall, a box of 55oz $15.49 also from above web site, I have 2 boxes in my 75 gallon...how much are ya going to spend on Flora Base, ALOT.....as for lighting I have 260 watts, 4-65 compact floresences 6400k

Mikaila31

Sorry if I'm a little skeptical. But do you have pics of your lights? At 3.5wpg you should be wayyy above the abilities of DIY CO2. On top of the fact that your tank's size is also beyond the abilities of DIY CO2. Do you run 260 all the time or just for a photo period? If its not that then IMO you have to be losing alot of light somehow, perhaps using a really inefficient fixture. Or you dealt with a ton of algae when you set that tank up and somehow managed to balance it.

The red sea reactor isn't anything special IMO. I have one, its not currently used. There are better, cheaper things IMO.

I agree on the OP's tank that 1.5wpg of T5's is going to be beyond DIY CO2. T5's break the WPG rule. 1.5 WPG of HO T5's is more than 1.5 wpg of CP florescents. I also agree with Jack Middleton on pressurized CO2 setups, they are not that expensive. You don't even need to go for the cheap fire extinguisher to stay around $200. I have 2 pressurized setups and both w/ silonoids. Total cost to be setup with tanks filled and drop checkers was roughly $180 and $230. The cheaper one actually runs off a 20oz paintball cylinder its cute but not the best quality system IMO. The price above includes the cost of the cheap parts I swapped out for glassware. The more expensive one uses a 5lb tank and is all shiny metal and brass. They both cost the same really since there is about a $30 difference between the cost of the paintball canister and the cost of the CO2 canister. Canister also costs more to fill. The more expensive setup has the ability to feed 3 different tanks if I wanted it too. It currently only feeds one. To provide CO2 to a 2nd and 3rd tank would cost $40-55 for each tank depending on how nice of parts I wanted.