I am still considered a newbie, going on one year, so experimenting with my co2 sounded right up my alley. I have had problems with my plants growing and pearling since I started. I have been using my Eheim as a co2 reactor for 3 months now, but getting minimal success with it. I wanted to try the misting Idea of Tom's. So I tried something new. Instead of pumping my co2 into my filter I tried pumping it into my powerhead. My powerhead is connected to a diy spraybar via 5/8 tubing. Imidiatly I started getting very fine buddles floating around everywhere. Well within a week plants started pearling and growing like never before.
I just want to thank Tom for his neverending quest for knowledge for our wife hating hobby "The Planted Aquarium".

Hey hey hey, there are husband's that hate the hobby also!

Glad it worked for you, keep on it and it'll produce excellent results.
Most folks will fall into this group.

It's those poor souls that still have issues that are the ones that concern me and present a challenge which I do enjoy, some get things right off the bat, some must wallow in the trenches for a long time to solve the issues they might have.

The point I try to impress is these changes and solutions are incremental, they build on one another synergistically....they get you that much closer to a very robust easy to grow system..........

EI is extremely robust, but folks whine that they feel it's not appropriate for all cases, well, nothing is truthfully, but it has a very wide margin of error and requires less monitoring than any dosing/CO2 enriched routine.........

If you have a problem, ask. I will always try and help and it might take awhile depending.........but generally in 1-2 weeks worth of changes, you should see some improvement.

So it might take a little while.

Now there will always be at least one person that will never get it right. It might be them, it might be something they overlooked, or it might be an expectation.............the possible unknowns are large, but simply going back to the basics and re setting things really keep you centered and focused, this virtually will always solve whatever issues you are presented with.

Now that you can grow well, it's time to garden.

Regards,
Tom Barr

I'm about ready to switch my CO2 to a powerhead/spraybar just as you described. I made a spraybar from 5/8 x 1/16 wall acrylic tubing, the length of my tank, and will attach it to a powerhead output. Do you just stick the CO2 tubing into the inlet to the powerhead, or use a diffuser to generate bubbles to be sucked into the powerhead? The former is what I am planning to try first.

I just feed the tubing through the bottom of the sponge straight into the intake. At the bottom of the intake there was a fitting I guess for an air-line.
You said you built a spraybar the length of your aquarium? Wow! Now thats an idea. Currently I have two spay bars in my aquarium; one for the Ehiem and one for the powerhead. The powerhead spraybar is running up and down spaying along the back of the aquarium. Although I am having trouble with excessive current. Its like 400 GPH I wonder if I just build a spaybar the length of the aquarium that it would solve the current problem. Let me know how it turns out.

I am using a very small powerhead - underwater pump actually. And, until my wrist gets a bit stronger I can't lift off my canopy to do this. At the same time I will be installing 2 AHS 55 watt light kits. I will try to remember to report how this all works, maybe even a photo of the spraybar/powerhead.