# diy co2 and running airstone at night.



## infinity8x3 (Feb 27, 2014)

Hi every one. I have a ten gallon tank. I am very broke right now at this point in my life so plz don't make fun.

But im trying and building up to a high tech tank maybe will be there in 5 years lol.

Any way I know diy co2 is crap and every one and thier brother will say to use pressurized. And I swear I would if some one would just donate me a co2 setup. Maybe I should try a kickstarter campaign.

Any way I'm stuck with diy co2 for a while. But I did very recently get a real ceramic disk diffuser a couple of days ago. And noticed a buttload lot more co2 being dissolved into the water. Even plants on the other side of the tank have bubbles all over them from all the micro bubbles floating around in the tank.

Seems great but is this to much co2? The ten gallon tank is heavily planted and has 6 cherry shrimp, 1 zebra nerite, and 2 oto's. I don't wanna gas them.

I installed a airstone on a timer that comes on as soon as the lights go off and goes off 2 hours before the lights come on.


<<<<TLDR?>>>>
Is this okay. To leave the co2 on 24/7 and run an airstone at night in a ten gallon? How long or often should the airstone stay on, or go off and on throughout the night? oh the diy co2 produces around ~1 bubble per second maybe a tiny bit more. And I run a HOB filter with a sponge prefilter and a diy water bottle baffler.


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

Using a single bottle of DIY CO2, it will be difficult to gas your 10 gallon aquarium, especially at 1 bubble per second. 

However, you can leave your airstone running at night, as you already have done so. This will help prevent dangerous accumulation of CO2.


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## greaser84 (Feb 2, 2014)

I have a 10 gallon and used diy co2 for a long time. You'll be fine leaving it running 24/7, you really have to anyways. I never used an air stone. A hob filter creates enough splash to keep oxygen in the water in a tank that size but an airstone running will always help. You should turn the airstone off at least an hour before the lights come on so the co2 can build up again. I have a pressurized CO2 system you can have for free! I just need $250 to ship it.:icon_bigg


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## Edub (Mar 23, 2011)

You should be fine, you won't produce enough gas to harm your fish


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## sharko (Apr 20, 2014)

Ok, I'm new at this, I've been running my DIY C02 24/7 and also running an airstone 24/7. Should I be turning my airstone off during the day? And if so, why?


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## infinity8x3 (Feb 27, 2014)

Thank you, A follow up question. Is running the airstone at night circumventing my CO2? Would it be better to have it come off and on throughout the night?
Finally am I thinking to far into this I get ADD in my hobbies real bad. But with only having ten gallons I feel that small mistakes lead to disasters in my ecosystem.



sharko said:


> Ok, I'm new at this, I've been running my DIY C02 24/7 and also running an airstone 24/7. Should I be turning my airstone off during the day? And if so, why?


I believe you shouldn't run an airstone and co2 at the same time because they are effectively canceling each other out. So basically you might as well run nothing and you would get the same effect.


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## aquariumrookie (Jan 28, 2014)

I think it should be OK, but when I ran DIY co2 in my planted 5.5 gallon Betta tank, I just took out the diffuser/air stone out of the water before I turned my lights off. I do not know if this is/was the best thing to do, but it worked for me.


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

sharko said:


> Ok, I'm new at this, I've been running my DIY C02 24/7 and also running an airstone 24/7. Should I be turning my airstone off during the day? And if so, why?


Yes, you should be turning off the airstone during the day. Excessive surface agitation will help CO2 diffusion out of your water, which is undesirable when the lights are on and plants are actively photosynthesizing.



infinity8x3 said:


> Thank you, A follow up question. Is running the airstone at night circumventing my CO2? Would it be better to have it come off and on throughout the night?


I am not sure what you mean by "circumventing your CO2."

You can have the airstone on all night, or have it come on and off during the night; it does not matter, as the ultimate goal is just to have it on to agitate the surface to promote CO2 diffusion out of the water.


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## Steve002 (Feb 7, 2014)

You mention seeing bubbles on your plants and say it is from the micro bubbles of CO2. It may however be something called pearling, which is oxygen being produced by your plants, normally indicating a happily photosynthesizing group of plants. Pearling shows up as bubbles adhering to the leaves and sometimes as a continuous string of small bubbles from a leaf, especially from a damaged portion of a leaf. Pearling will start after the lights have been on for a while and most folks consider it to be a desirable indication that they are supplying sufficient light and CO2 to their plants.
I agree that you are not likely going to gas your livestock with a DIY set up and it won't hurt to leave it on 24/7. 
Your timed air stone is a good idea (I run one in my tank too) but you are not really adding oxygen to the water with it and oxygen dosen't cancel out CO2. What your air stone does is help promote the off gassing of CO2 from the water by increasing the surface agitation and by flushing out any CO2 held at the water surface, especially in a lidded tank. It is not that your plants mind the CO2 at night it is just that they don't need it. Having a higher % of dissolved CO2 in your water dosen't necessarily mean you have a lower % of oxygen, it all depends on the partial pressures of the gasses in the air that is in contact with the water. You can have a higher than normal CO2 & oxygen at the expense of the dissolved nitrogen content.
I would suggest your air stone start at the same time your lights turn off and then stop about 1 or 2 hours before they turn on.


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## infinity8x3 (Feb 27, 2014)

thank you, that makes sense. I was thinking the water could only hold so much gas and co2 would replace oxygen and vise versa. I didn't know that the % of gas would increase and decrease independent of each other. 

In my mind it was like water and oil they don't mix and you could only have a certain percentage of each in a given space. Like a jar filled with 50% oil and 50% water would make the jar 100% full and if you wanted to add more oil you would lose some water, now you would have 60% oil 40% water to make your jar 100% full.

Glad you cleared that up for me. So basically your saying you can have high co2 and oxygen levels at the same time.


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