An Easy Way to Increase Your Tank's pH with a CO2 Scrubber

Daniel@R2R · Nov 18, 2019

._Z_. said:
Made one of these today using a voss plastic water bottle and BRS media for my tunze 9004 skimmer. Already seeing a .20 pH increase!

The small bag of media fit perfectly, wish I could find a cheaper source without buying 5 gallon buckets though.

Cool!

SeeFu · Apr 26, 2020

instead of using a smaller gatorade bottle, couldn't i just use a 1 gal apple juice container which would then allow me to only have to change the media a few times a year? Does using a container that's much larger vs smaller result in wasteful use of the co2 scrubbing media? If not, I might as well just use a 5 gal bucket and change the media once a yr.

SeeFu · Apr 30, 2020

this has worked great for me. in 1 day i saw a .2 ph increase. this can get pretty expensive though. I just wanted to get a small bottle to see if this was going to be effective for me so i bought the two little fishies stuff. looks like w/ the two little fishies, it's going to cost me about $1/day.

hopefully the 5 gal stuff from medvet is a lot cheaper / day

Rick Mathew · Apr 30, 2020

SeeFu said:
this has worked great for me. in 1 day i saw a .2 ph increase. this can get pretty expensive though. I just wanted to get a small bottle to see if this was going to be effective for me so i bought the two little fishies stuff. looks like w/ the two little fishies, it's going to cost me about $1/day.

hopefully the 5 gal stuff from medvet is a lot cheaper / day

I have never purchased the 5 gal container so I don't know how the shipping cost would work out but the shipping cost on the 3 LB bag was really high for MedVet...The BRS 7.5 lb material worked out to be less expensive because the shipping was free...there is the issue that the BRS color change is not as dramatic but it is workable...at least for me...

SeeFu · Apr 30, 2020

how many lbs is the medvet 5 gal? You can pick it up from amzaon for $115 shipped

Sdot · May 6, 2020

SeeFu said:
how many lbs is the medvet 5 gal? You can pick it up from amzaon for $115 shipped

Im intrested in this as well. Ive been using Two Little Fishies media, amazon no longer sells it. Im curious if they work the same or if one works better.

Sdot · May 6, 2020

SeeFu said:
how many lbs is the medvet 5 gal? You can pick it up from amzaon for $115 shipped

45LBS

SeeFu · May 6, 2020

SeeFu said:
yea did that too. both come out w/ same results. with the manual mode, i even let it sit in each calibration fluid for 10 min before moving onto the next step.

Sdot said:
Im intrested in this as well. Ive been using Two Little Fishies media, amazon no longer sells it. Im curious if they work the same or if one works better.

Sdot · May 6, 2020

SeeFu said:

Yeah i saw that one...does that work as good as two little fishes?

SeeFu · May 6, 2020

that's what several people in this thread use.

PR_nano · May 6, 2020

Installed the c02 scrubber yesterday (24 hours) and first time hitting a pH of 8. Can I expect it to raise more in the next couple of days? Apex 7 day graph.

CJO · May 6, 2020

SeeFu said:
instead of using a smaller gatorade bottle, couldn't i just use a 1 gal apple juice container which would then allow me to only have to change the media a few times a year? Does using a container that's much larger vs smaller result in wasteful use of the co2 scrubbing media? If not, I might as well just use a 5 gal bucket and change the media once a yr.

I don't see how it would hurt to just run it through a 5 gallon bucket. The only negative i see is that you wouldn't have a good indication on when you have to order replacement product.

CJO · May 6, 2020

PR_nano said:
Installed the c02 scrubber yesterday (24 hours) and first time hitting a pH of 8. Can I expect it to raise more in the next couple of days? Apex 7 day graph.

Mine typically runs 8.1-8.3, depending on the time.

justingraham · May 6, 2020

PR_nano said:
Installed the c02 scrubber yesterday (24 hours) and first time hitting a pH of 8. Can I expect it to raise more in the next couple of days? Apex 7 day graph.

Watch ur alk

SeeFu · May 6, 2020

PR_nano said:
Installed the c02 scrubber yesterday (24 hours) and first time hitting a pH of 8. Can I expect it to raise more in the next couple of days? Apex 7 day graph.

it took me a few days to reach peak.

SeeFu · May 8, 2020

so i just replaced my water bottle w/ an actual reactor from BRS. i'm not sure if its because the reactor holds more media or because its more effective, but i got another .2 jump in PH. it got so high that I had to turn off the skimmer. I'm at 8.42 now.

justingraham · May 9, 2020

SeeFu said:
so i just replaced my water bottle w/ an actual reactor from BRS. i'm not sure if its because the reactor holds more media or because its more effective, but i got another .2 jump in PH. it got so high that I had to turn off the skimmer. I'm at 8.42 now.

I would re calibrate the probe

SeeFu · May 9, 2020

my probe is good. i'm going to have to limit the amount of time my skimmer is on now.

CJO · May 9, 2020

SeeFu said:
my probe is good. i'm going to have to limit the amount of time my skimmer is on now.

You can also put in a valve that allows you to combine fresh air with the scrubbed air

SeeFu · May 9, 2020

CJO said:
You can also put in a valve that allows you to combine fresh air with the scrubbed air

yea i saw BRS attached a fresh air valve w/ a solenoid and hooked it up to apex so that when ph hit a specific number the fresh air valve would open up.