CO2 Bubble maker

[DawnMarie81]

Hey everyone.  We were told by the local fish guy that since we have 6 live plants in our tank (75 g fresh water) that we have ot have a CO2 bubble maker.  We bought one and read the instructions, which said that it was made for a tank way smaller then ours, but the fish guy assured us that it would be enough.  Well after a couple days of getting nothing out of the damn thing, we returned it.  Then bought another one thinking the first just didnt work.  Now the second one has been in our tank for about a week and we are starting to see a few little bubbles this time, but only like one or two a minute.  What is the standard bubble rate we should be getting out of this or what is needed for our tank.  Is there any way to make it bubble faster to get the CO2 up a bit?

[fischkopp]

Kinda like the expression "CO2 bubble maker" Which one did you get?

Simple ones are usually based on yeast and sugar (follow the instructions): the bacteria will eat the sugar, reproduce rapidly and 'exhale' CO2. The yeast will need a certain temperature to live; the warmer it is the faster their metabolism works and hence the faster the produce CO2 (and reproduce themselves). Any temperature around 20-25°C is OK.

In the future you may want to make your CO2 a bit cheaper, just search this forum (or the web) for "DIY CO2" and you will find plenty of info.

Regarding the need of CO2: having 6 plants in a 75 gal doesn't implicitly require CO2 injections. Let us know more about your lighting and the plants and we can help you a bit more.

[dan2x38]

DawnMarie81 what plants do you have?

[charlie]

Dawn , you have a multiple of scenarios here,for starters it would appear you only have 1.7 watts of lighting on the tank ( got this info from your other post), that light level does not require CO2 injection ( but could be a benefit).
The next thing is the co2 kit you bought is not going to be beneficial to a 75 gln tank regardless of how much bubbles you can get it up to, it is just not capable of producing enough CO2 to impact that volume of water & as mentioned before with the lighting you have, it is not required.

The best approach for you if you want to keep plants, is to acquire plants that can be sustained by the lights you have at present ( low light plants),try to get the hardy species & the faster growing stem plants, also planting heavily from the start will give you better results, another benefit for this approach is less cycle time, as the more plants you have the easier the demand for biological cycling.

I would suggest that you do not add any more fish to the tank for now & for a few months , until the tank stabilizes & you have better control of the related issues, the more livestock in the tank results in more waste , which results in more toxicity & nutrients , which will tax you biological filter & contribute to algae bloom ( if your plants can`t use up the nutrients)
Hope this helps

Here is a link to a guide of low & medium low light plants
http://www.plantgeek.net/plantguide_cat.php?category=1

http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/plants/bettsplants/index.html

[jetstream]

Did you use water straight from the tap when you mixed the chemicals? 

[DawnMarie81]

Thanks for the info guys.  Normally we wouldnt have bothered at all with the CO2 bubble maker, but being new to this hobby, i figured the fish guy knew what he was talking about when he said we needed it and that it would work great.  I am not sure what types of plants we have.  When we picked them out, they didnt have names on what kinds they were.  As for the type of CO2 bubbley maker, it is a...Nutrafin Natural Plant System, and works by putting the sugar in it, the activator and stabalizer stuff all in it then the warm water.

Yes, when we added the warm water to it, we added it straight from the tap.  Should I not have done that?

This damn thing seems more problem then good.  I have to unhook the suction cups every day to release one or more of the tetras that are too dumb to not squish behind it and get stuck.   

[dan2x38]

Did you buy this CO2 system at PetSmart? PetSmart offers money back gaurentee one the good things about dealing with them. Even if you bought a bag of cat food that was 1/2 gone you can return it for your money back.

What you have for creating CO2 is a simple CO2 generator. The magic formula for making CO2 is sugar & yeast. You use 1 tsp. yeast, 2 cups sugar, in a 2 litre pop bottle. Yes the water should be treated just as if adding it to your tank to remove chloramine which (this is what we are treating for) kills yeast bacteria. You can make a do-it-yourself (DIY) yeast generator for $5. But on a 75g tank it will not do the trick.

Like mentioned for the low wattage lighting you have you do not need CO2.

You can post pictures of your plants we can try to identify for you.