Oxygen and Co2

[ethank77]

I was wouldering if there is a apliance that can generate oxygen from co2. Reasone being I have a large faminy and a lower ph level than I would like around 7.75 day and 7.60 night I use lime water and home made buff from baked baking soda. Despite all efforts my ph stays low I can not run a air line out side for the skimmer because I use an aqua c urchin wich has no air feed. Also an open window where I live would cause deth from blood loss. Lfs owner was joking the other day about little kids in his shop getting a buz off of some machine he has because of high o2 levels. Was he pulling my chain or does some machine exist.

[tmz]

None of which I am aware.
If you want to determine if you have high CO2 in your home you can perform an aeration test of your tank water. Take a sample and aerate it in the house with airstone or by swirling it vigorously for a few minutes. Test the ph. Repeat this process with a new sample outside. Compare the ph values. If outside is significantly higher then the air in the house may be high in CO2. If not the problem is elsewhere.

If you do have high in house CO2 levels you can run an airline to provide outside air into your skimmer.

[yraveh]

I have had the same problem. I top off with kalkwasser. I mix lime in my top off water so that my night pH is ~7.8-8.0. My Ca and alkalinity are higher than normal but I see no ill-effect of higher than nl concentration.
I did the aeration test in the past but could not prove a change in ph with indoor vs. outdoor air. yet upon ruling out other etiologies for low pH , I concluded that ambient co2 is the most likely cause.
I think this problem is more common in warm climate like ours due to year-round AC.

[Billybeau1]

How are you measuring pH ?

[bertoni]

I don't think there's a practical device for converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. That's fairly energy-intensive.

You might be able to run a small air line from the outside to water surface of the tank if there's a hood or the like to control the air flow. The skimmer must take air somehow, so perhaps someone who's good with DIY modifications could help there.

[Masoch]

Howdy,

You might want to DIY a turf scrubber -- they're really not all that hard to make, and there are lots of threads here and on other boards with instructions.

The basic idea is to make a "waterfall" like you see in fancy schmancy waiting rooms and restaurants with the water flowing over a screen. The basic ones are a length of PVC that's capped at one end, has a hose barb for a powerhead at the other, a straight slit between the cap and the barb for water to flow out of, and some craft screen or tank divider screen (about 8" X 8" for you) in the slit.

Light each side of the screen (18 hour, reverse photo period from your tank's light) with a CFL floodlight. Some people set up these contraptions in buckets, some just suspend them over their sumps, and some folks make acrylic boxes that are about 2" wide and a bit wider than their screens. The PVC rests on top of the box, with the screen hanging in the middle.

The waterfall effect is turbulent enough to help reduce CO2, and the scrubbers themselves grow algae /fast/ which helps to boost O2 and deplete CO2.

For me, with an acrylic scrubber (FWIW, it took me, a newbie with acrylic, about 3 hours and a cheap table saw to make a scrubber), my pH went from ~7.8 at night to 8.2, and the tank hovers near 8.4 during the day.

Scrubbers are also pretty good at lower N and P.

HTH

[Genetics]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14096126#post14096126 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ethank77
I was wouldering if there is a apliance that can generate oxygen from co2. Reasone being I have a large faminy and a lower ph level than I would like around 7.75 day and 7.60 night I use lime water and home made buff from baked baking soda. Despite all efforts my ph stays low I can not run a air line out side for the skimmer because I use an aqua c urchin wich has no air feed. Also an open window where I live would cause deth from blood loss. Lfs owner was joking the other day about little kids in his shop getting a buz off of some machine he has because of high o2 levels. Was he pulling my chain or does some machine exist.

He was probably talking about an ozonator which produces O3 from O2 (not a balanced equation). The kids will not get high off of this though and if you can smell it then there is too much being run. I did notice that you are using baking soda. That will raise your alk but lower your pH. Kalkwasser will raise your pH.

[therealfatman]

Increased circulation and an air to air heat exchanger. They can be easily made if you can not afford the small home versions. It will just be the equivalent to have a cracked open window but without the large heat loss.

They are just basically a large number of sheets of thin aluminum with half the spces containing air being blown out of the house and half of the spaces having air that is being blown into the house. Typically the home made ones just use news paper aluminum printing sheets for the plates in the heat exchanger and use rings cut from small diameter pvc pipe epoxied to the sheets as spacers to hold the sheets seperated. But things like plastic buttons bought in bulk or something of that nature would work just as well. Small box fans would well work for the fans especially if the are adjustable dc fans. You only need to rid the room containing yoy tank of high levels of carbon dioxide not your whole home so the size could be no larger than a couple of shoe boxes.

You can PM me if you have questions.