Needle wheel DIY modifications

[Tom Barr]

Compared to a disc alone, the efficency is about 30-50% higher, meaning you use less to achieve the same ppm's/effect on plants.

Also, the evenness and response time to go from 3-4ppm of CO2 at night to the day when you need CO2 is reduced by 80-90% in that first 1 hour or so.

These are things few aquarist measure or consider.

But.......they both work as methods for adding CO2......and you use more CO2, which is no big deal really, it's cheap.

What is a bigger deal, at least to me, is the response time, evenness, and consistency of the method. It needs to be able to produce good stable rapid influx of CO2 and keep it there.

Why?

The less I have to mess with CO2, and have it keep rising later after I set it at a particular rate, the less chance I will add too much and gas the fish/add too much CO2.

The CO2 becomes easier to manage and adjust.
Disc are always clogging and need cleaning, if you miss doing that, the aquarium gets poorer growth, algae etc.

I've go the routine down for keeping disc clean, but it'd be nice not to bother with that, make adding CO2 to a good level with less fish issues. the mazzei and the Needle wheel offer that much better than disc, particularly when higher light is used or higher fish loads, more sensitive fish.

There are trade offs, but they tend/can be reduced and pretty much a non issue if you can easily DIY the needle wheel. Mazzei's require a lot more pressure to strip the gas into a mist making them good for larger systems and bad for smaller aquariums.


Regards,
Tom barr

[Philosophos]

Possible upgrade, this thing is like a koralia on steroids that accepts airline tubing for its intake. Cheap and tiny:

Taam SEIO

Personally I'm looking for something I can add in-line, outside of the tank on a 20g to reduce clutter, but this caught my eye while hunting.

Tom, your idea looks like something that's going to get rid of a large headache. I've always hated trying to keep CO2 consistent. This concept also looks like it'd go along nice with some loc-line.

-Philosophos

[VaughnH]

Possible upgrade, this thing is like a koralia on steroids that accepts airline tubing for its intake. Cheap and tiny:

Taam SEIO

Personally I'm looking for something I can add in-line, outside of the tank on a 20g to reduce clutter, but this caught my eye while hunting.

Tom, your idea looks like something that's going to get rid of a large headache. I've always hated trying to keep CO2 consistent. This concept also looks like it'd go along nice with some loc-line.

-Philosophos

If that little "powerhead" is reliable it is a great addition to the list of products that should be useful. It isn't clear to me whether the "venturi" attachment runs the gas through the propeller or just into the outlet of the propeller. I hope it is the former. TAAM Inc., Aquarium Products. NEW PRODUCT: SEIO PROP is some more information about it.

[Gerryd]

Vaughn,

If you go to the 'installation' tab at this page:

TAAM Inc., Aquarium Products. NEW PRODUCT: SEIO PROP

and open the PDF http://www.riopump.net/installation%...%20booklet.pdf, you will see that the BACK of the pump has a 'variable venturi intake', part #11, that seems to be blue in color.

Looks like either the c02 can enter here or maybe the hole to the left of it?

This would indicate PRIOR to the impeller which is good for us!

Hope this helps.

[Tom Barr]

Possible upgrade, this thing is like a koralia on steroids that accepts airline tubing for its intake. Cheap and tiny:

Taam SEIO

Personally I'm looking for something I can add in-line, outside of the tank on a 20g to reduce clutter, but this caught my eye while hunting.

Tom, your idea looks like something that's going to get rid of a large headache. I've always hated trying to keep CO2 consistent. This concept also looks like it'd go along nice with some loc-line.

-Philosophos

You cannot modify the impeller in those however, the traditional say Rio 100 is perfect for my 180 Gallon tank.

I set it up without doing the furring of the blades(15 blades, each cut 2x for 3 per 5 of the original = 15 total)

I'll fur the blades later.
Uses 12 watts for 10 hours per day. About 5.60 per year extra vs the disc.

However, I do not have to clean the disc and the Tilex use/chemical impact vs the low electric use is also to be considered. You also get more flow when you need it most, during the day to mix the CO2, so I do get another 300gph of water pushed around the tank, disc don't do that nor have any directionality/spray bar etc.

I have some nice loc line 1/2" 24" spray bar I might play with, but the tank is seen from both ends, but the 1/2 will fit perfect on the Rio pump.

I'll convert the 120 Gal which has the most issues to the Rio 1000 next.

The other tanks I'll leave as is with the disc.
The 38 I might try with a Rio 180 and fur up the impeller.

Not sure yet.

I have those Seio pumps BTW, they do not work well for that, I sold them, I do have one left, if you are interested, 620 gph and a wavetimer as well.
.


Regards,
Tom Barr

[VaughnH]

My interest in those new little propeller pumps would only be for adding water circulation, but with a smaller package in the tank. If I could get that to also distribute CO2 mist that would be a bonus, but I can see how it wouldn't be likely that the propeller could be modified to do that. My next CO2 effort will likely be a small Rio, with the "shredded" blades, used to grab the excess CO2 from my external reactor. I may try to add "fur" to the blades, since I have a little bottle of super glue gel on hand now.

[Philosophos]

620 gph would plaster my fish to the glass. Thanks all the same, though. It's a shame they won't mod.

Does anyone know anything about the LifeGuard "Quite One" pumps? They're available at a cheap price around here, and appear to function in-line rather than requiring that they be submerged.

-Philosophos

[Tom Barr]

Comments on the Rio 1000 with triple cut impeller blades:

Excellent, no noise. The mist is about that of the Mazzei 3/4" however, no asssociated head flow loss in the filter, which in turn affects the pressure as the filter cloggs, thus the performance of the mazzei venturi.

Rather than driving the flow of mist somewhere like with the disc, you already can direct it.

I placed the Rio down behind some wood and below the Maxi jet mod wave pump propeller(2000gph). Thus they can be polaced and hidden much easier than the disc.

Much better atomization than any disc. Similar to a mazzei.

For smaller and even larger tanks in the 240 and under range, this is a very viable method that's cheap and easy to do.

Particularly if you add extra powerheads for circulation etc anyway.
You lose some flow by modifying the impellers, but you gain and good CO2 distribution method and atomization.

So you lose a little flow, but the CO2 is much better.

A good trade off.

BTW, this can work well with DIY yeast CO2 by simply turning the powerhead off at night to throttle the DIY on/off without a solenoid etc.

BTW, the plastic needle point material trimmed with scissors makes a really good plastic fur. About .5mm dia and 1-2mm long. Semi rigid plastic.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[eyebeatbadgers]

620 gph would plaster my fish to the glass. Thanks all the same, though. It's a shame they won't mod.

Does anyone know anything about the LifeGuard "Quite One" pumps? They're available at a cheap price around here, and appear to function in-line rather than requiring that they be submerged.

-Philosophos

You may also check into the brands Gen-X and Octopus. They are pre-made needle wheel pumps, and function well in-line. I use the Gen-X 1000 model, and it functions very well. The pump is perfectly silent, and gives me no need to tinker with adding pads or furring up blades

[jonny_ftm]

Hi,

I read in the last hours most of the DIY needle wheel stuff. I'm just regretting to have bought the AM1000

I have one question. If I want to run inline with a powerhead made to run emerged, would be the extra power on the canister outlet cause long term damage to the exernal canister impeller?