Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

On a lot of aquariam sites they have co2 kits to help the plants grow i am told buy the experts it does not effect the fish also the hydro sites all sell co2 kits now i am wondering in my glass house i have a gas heater that will make co2 do i put my air pump in the glasshouse to get the co2 yes no that is the questian most of the drug stuff thats dumped is set up for co2

if your careful it doesnt affect the fish, i have heard many a stories of people killing fish with too much c02, i think most times where due to the massive ph swing rather than a lack of 02 in the water...
but if carefull (for both you and the fish) i reckon it would do alot of good for the plants.......

CO2 is acidic, so maybe bubblimg it through a bag of shells would buffer it? Don't know if this would work, just a thought....

CO2 is used in hydroponic and glasshouse operations to increase plant growth... and yep the druggies use it to increase bud growth and supposedly potency...

If you remember the plant growth cycle....

Plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and react with the plants chlorophyll to produce the sugars and starchs needed for plant growth....

The waste byproduct - oxygen - is transpired (along with some water) back into the atmosphere....

Haven't heard of it being used in aquariums.... might work..... not sure I see the point of bubbling through the water of an AP system though.

Can't see any benefit and as pointed out, could result in buffering problems

Definite scientific basis for increasing plant growth/production rates....

Some caveats as to how much can be used beneficially at certain stages of plant growth, temperatures, humidity etc....

Will dig up some notes... somewhere .....

I don't think it'd make that much of a difference (maybe in pH), because the fish already produce CO2, so AP plants get more CO2 than soil-based plants already.

I used CO2 to increase the plant growth of aquatic plants.... and it worked great... However, would putting co2 in the WATER of an AP system help the plants at all? Your gas heater would produce carbon dioxide by burning the gas - so you get CO2 and heat all in one hit... but remember that plants need more oxygen at night and more CO2 during the day...

I have heard of hydroponic people , (weird lot! ... been there ... done that! ), keeping bunny rabbits on the floors of their glass houses in an attempt to accellerate plant growth. (I reckon you would need a thousand bunnies per plant to see an effect in a draughty greenhouse!)

The same type of humans also use kero (fossil fuel) heaters to concentrate CO2 in their greenhouses .. and hope that accellerated plant growth will happen. It probably will. But isn't it defeating the object ...

Hmmmm

The reason co2 is bubbled in the planted aquarium is the same reson it is used in green houses / hydro setups. plants obtain their carbon from the co2 in the atmosphere, in the case of aquatic plants its from the dissolved co2.

To give you a short answer: NO. dont do it. your AP plants will be using the CO2 from the air. although good water oxygenation has shown to be beneficial i don't think the same is true for CO2.

In the green house is a different story. your propane burner will be warming the air plus adding CO2, this is good. trials have shown incresed plant growth up to i think 3x atmospheric, and that in a completely closed green house the co2 levels can drop VERY low shortly after the sun rises becasue the plants use it all.

Umm, there are other gases to be concerned about with a gas heater...carbon monoxide? Fueled heaters in a greenhouse can cause damage to plants. It must be vented!

was just highlighting that in a minimally vented green house co2 can drop.

I've only done a little reading on the topic a while ago. Feel free to expand, hayden. Carbon monoxide did pop up in my mind.

if you did have a higher co2 atmosphere in the greenhouse, and an airpump in the greenhouse pumping high co2 air into the fishtanks, if there is good aeration in the tanks, C02 shouldn't be a problem as all the info i have read says to keep the co2 in the water the water has to be fairly still as co2 gasses of pretty easily. So most of the co2 would remain in the air where you want so the plants can photosynthesise and absorb it through the leaves.........

yeh, but point is that there is no benifit of moving the pump to the greenhouse.

co2 is heavier than air so it`ll sink to the floor, it`s no biggy if your growbeds are down there too though.

I seriously doubt it`ll make much of a difference to growth rates as, for most people at least, co2 isn`t a limiting factor..that`s usually light intensity.

Without that the plants can`t take advantage of elevated co2 levels anyway

I'm quite happy to let AP do its thing naturally...if in a commercial atmosphere I could see the benefit in exploring this type of avenue - my thoughts :shrug:

To know if it would be worthwhile:

1 find out how much CO2 you need for a given plant volume/mass (greenhouse suppliers, hortie's or hydroponics suppliers should be able to tell you (at least what they want to sell you)).

2 find out how much CO2 fish produce at given temperatures, feeding rates, etc. Will be different for different species but it is the kind of thing that will have been worked out for at least some of the comercial aquaculture species or it may be infered from related studies on metabolism.