carbon doser regulator working pressure fluctates (frustrating!)

reeftivo · Aug 3, 2021

has any other carbon doser regulator owners had issues with their working pressure either dropping or going way up after its been set?

had mine running for a week now and when i set the working pressure to 9 and walk away, when i come back it's either up to 25 or down to like 2. it mostly jumps up. i'm going to watch the working pressure gauge tonight and see if it jumps again when the controller activates the solenoid . I ran through the pre-check leak tests and all went fine before i fired it up, so not sure what's happening.

reeftivo · Aug 4, 2021

contacted Aquarium plants.com where i purchased and the person who answered the phone said that was odd and their tech person would call me back when they get in. no call back yet, but i'll follow up again today. after watching it for a while last night, it slowly increases in working pressure over time (1 psi per 5-10 minutes). sounds like a defective pressure regulator to me. any one else have this issue??

minus9 · Aug 4, 2021

Hopefully their CS will resolve the issue? If not, I would reach out to Alan Le and buy one of his custom dual stage regulators (he's in the bay area) and you'll never have this issue again. I know this isn't what you want to hear, but there are better alternatives to the carbon doser for the same price with superior components.

reeftivo · Aug 4, 2021

minus9 said:
Hopefully their CS will resolve the issue? If not, I would reach out to Alan Le and buy one of his custom dual stage regulators (he's in the bay area) and you'll never have this issue again. I know this isn't what you want to hear, but there are better alternatives to the carbon doser for the same price with superior components.

thanks

i hear ya! i have a fairly expensive green leaf aquariums regulator i pulled off the bottle for this. may have to put it back on if i can't get things resolved. i'm running the CD regulator without a BB counter, so when i finally talk to aquarium plants tech person i will bring that up, although i doubt that's the issue.

this is what was replaced by the CD regulator.