Murdocmason

Hey hey all was just curious about the DIY Co2 system i currently have one going in my 29 gallon and was wondering how i can tell the PPM of the Co2 in the water is it the formulation of drops on test reagentx10 accroding to my test kit which would come out to about 40 then you take the 40 and x.056 to get 2.24 now is that the degrees of kH i have? if so i would then take that number and enter it into the calculator on this page http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_co2chart.htm which according to it i have about 21.25 ppm with 6.0 pH just curious if im doing the math right and i know a handheld meter would be a heck of a lot easier lol =) thx again
DOC

mathas

If I'm reading your post correctly, your water has a pH of 6.0 and a hardness of 2.24 DKH? If that's correct, I see a CO2 concentration of 67.2ppm on the calculator and the link you provided. How did you get 21.25? According to the chart further down the page, with a pH of 6.0 you'd need a hardness somewhere in the .5-1 dKH range to achieve 21.25ppm CO2.

That said, as he says all over the page, there are a variety of factors that can skew the pH/hardness/CO2 relationship. It might be worth looking into either purchasing or building a drop-checker if you either can't afford or don't want to purchase a meter.

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/di...under-1-a.html
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/f...p-checker.html
etc.

Also, where are you getting the drops*10*0.56 formula from? It would help if we knew which KH test kit you had. With the API kit, the number of drops it takes to turn the solution bright yellow is your dKH value, there's no math involved.

Murdocmason

ok heres the offical test reading it says that after one drop that the color change in the vial should be blue which it is then it says to proceed to put one drop in at a time until it changes from blue to yellow which takes me a total of four more drops after the initial first drop it then says take the total number of drops and multiply by 10 which i come out to 50. now do I multiply by .056 ? i got the .056 from the back of the test booklet.now if i take that number and multiply it by the .056 then i get 2.8 is the 2.8 my degrees of kH?? if so then i take that and plug it in to the calc on the linked page then i get 50.12 ppm of kH and Co2 is at 26.5 I know alot of this is self explainatory but im jsut trying to bounce this off someone to make sure im getting this all right =) also my ph is currently 6.5 by handheld meter the .5 really sets things off quite a bit also anyways thx again for your input =)