3 gallon planted tank

[amehel0]

my small (nano) planted tank; its only 3 gallon im setting up my diy co2. no need to use it now as the plants arnt growing ( only set it up yester day) so in two weeks (maybe) ill set up the co2 after ive finished paying for my cabinet and open top hood for my large tank. there are two fish cant really see em they like to hide in the rocks.









yeh it is a freshwater setup. it kinda looks like a marine with the rocks a nd the valis looks like eel grass and java moss like some macroalgae

 

[WyldFya]

Great looking start. I'd fill it in more with some other plants. Your pump will gas all the co2 off as well.

 

[robmcd]

Ive been told that smaller tanks are far more difficult to keep planted than bigger tanks are. Good luck.

 

[amehel0]

yeh im gonna have a lawn of sword plants in. in probably gonna take out the filter ive only got it in their because of fish. anyway i should start the diy co2 in 3-4 days. my question is. can i have an airstone (with tubing) hooked up straight to a bottle and what kind of yeast? im also gonna have better lights and one feature plant(some thing small yet really good looking) any suggestions?

 

[Haag13]

You could have an airstone hooked up by tubing straight to the co2 but it isn't optimal. You should definitely have a check valve between the tank and co2 if your co2 will be below the tank level. You should also consider a bubble counter so that you have an idea about how much co2 your set-up is producing but if you are just using an airstone at the end of the line, it probably isn't necessary. That being said, an airstone alone isn't a very good way to get the co2 diffused into the water. Most of it will simply rise to the surface as bubbles and be lost. If you have a place in the tank where you could hide a diffusion ladder or bell, it would help a lot. How will you be filtering the tank? The filtering method may provide a few alternate or better ways to diffuse the co2. Whichever filter you should, try to have as little surface turbulance as possible. As for the yeast, several people insist that brewer's or champagne yeast is the best, but standard grocery store baker's yeast has always worked fine for me.

 

[amehel0]

will the check valve will stop aquarium water into co2 bottle or the other way around? yeh im gonna use a thing to keep the co2 in maybe a small acrylic cube.

 

[Haag13]

the check valve will prevent a siphon backflow of aquarium water if the DIY CO2 should lose pressure. A small DIY bubble counter would have the added benefit of preventing any sugar/yeast mixture from getting into the tank, but if it's set-up correctly, you really shouldn't have any problems with the mixture getting into the tank anyway.

 

[amehel0]

where can i get plans/how too's on making a diy bubble counter

 

[Haag13]

No need for anything fancy really. Mine is a small water bottle. You need to drill 2 holes in the top of a soda/water/whatever bottle cap. Make sure you drill them smaller than the diameter of your tubing. When you cut the tubing, be sure to cut it on a steep angle. This allows you to put the tip of it through the hole you drilled and then pull it through with some pliers or whatever you have to ensure a very snug fit. If you do it this way, you won't have to use any sealant. Fill the bottle about 3/4 full of water. You pull the piece of tubing that will be from your CO2 device through the hole and leave enough so that it extends down to almost the bottom of the bottle. The next piece of tubing you pull through you'll only let extend down just a little bit(basically it has to stay out of the water.) The other end of the tubing that isn't under water will go into your aquarium/diffuser/whatever. Basically, it works as follows: CO2 flows down through the tubing that is under water and comes out as bubbles. As the bubbles float to the top of the bottle you can count them to see how much CO2 you are producing. The CO2 will then exit the bubble counter through the tubing that isn't under the water. People usually add a check valve before/after the bubble counter if necessary. I hope this wasn't too confusing. Once you understand the principle, you should be able to set up your own however you like. Here's a picture of mine and how I cut the tubing to be able to pull it through the smaller hole.

 

[Haag13]

Because of the angle of the picture, it looks like both pieces of tubing could be going through the same hole but there are two separate holes in the bottle cap.