Neptune Aquatics

If CO2 is heavier than air, is it worth it to make a snorkel for your skimmer to pull air from above the tank?

Vincerama2

Vincerama2

Guest
BARcard
As the title asks ... if CO2 is heavier than air, then would it be worth it to attach a simple hose to your skimmer's air intake and just place the input of the hose up high, like above your canopy, instead of down low in the sump? OR would it make absolutely no difference.
I've heard of people using CO2 scrubbers and some actually run a fresh air line in from the outside of the house, which I'm not quite willing to do, and of course open windows in the winter is a waste of heating. A simple hose to the top of the tank is cheap.

How about a small fan in the sump area to just move air around?

Thoughts?

V
 
If all things were equal temperature and pressure wise, then you'd end up with stratification. But if I recall, temperature is a much bigger factor than density since oxygen and carbon dioxide aren't too far off density wise. There's tons on convection from heat differences or motion just someone breathing/moving to mix the air. Gases don't have surface tension like liquids, so you're not going to see an oil and water type of separation.

Second Mike's recommendation to use the club CO2 meter, I think @JVU has it. You'll likely see the best benefit running a line outside though if your room levels are over 500+ ppm.
 
Sorry to hijack the thread, but what if you ran the air hose into your wall instead of totally outside? I know that sounds absurd, but I was wondering if I could just drill a little hole into an electrical outlet cover, drop an air hose in there, and get all the benefits without the hole though a wall + stucco. Presumably I'd want to add an air filter somehow to the setup.

I'd also be curious to know the readings coming out of a HVAC vent.
 
I had thought about a hole in the wall then down into the crawlspace too. But then the idea of just a snorkel hit me. But I guess I'll borrow the CO2 meter at some point to see if there is actually an indoor spot near the tank that can be used.
Along the lines of your idea ... a line to the heater register in your floor would bring air in from "somewhere else" in the house.

An of course, this might be all moot if you run a CA reactor, which I might do, so directly adding CO2 to the tank.

V
 
Darkxerox said:
If all things were equal temperature and pressure wise, then you'd end up with stratification. But if I recall, temperature is a much bigger factor than density since oxygen and carbon dioxide aren't too far off density wise. There's tons on convection from heat differences or motion just someone breathing/moving to mix the air. Gases don't have surface tension like liquids, so you're not going to see an oil and water type of separation.
Click to expand...
Yeah this in a nutshell, if there was absolutely no movement in the room by quite literally anything you may see some separations, but I don't think the CO2 levels are really THAT high in the grand scheme of things to have a layer of CO2 along the sump layer versus 6 feet higher. Although who knows, there was a CSI episode where someone was killed with another person drilled a hole in their dorm wall and put dry ice on the other side and the two in the room ended up dying because they had hanky panky on the floor or something :D
 
Last edited:
sfsuphysics said:
Yeah this in a nutshell, if there was absolutely no movement in the room by quite literally anything you may see some separations, but I don't think the CO2 levels are really THAT high in the grand scheme of things to have a layer of CO2 along the sump layer versus 6 feet higher. Although who knows, there was a CO2 episode where someone was killed with another person drilled a hole in their dorm wall and put dry ice on the other side and the two in the room ended up dying because they had hanky panky on the floor or something :D
Click to expand...
Off topic, but some Russian i fluencer had a birthday party at a spa and her husband tossed huge chunks of dry ice into the hot tub. It made a lot of “smoke” and three people, including th husband, jumped in. Two of them die as they surfaced and took in lungfuls of co2 instead of air. Everyone else barely made it out of the room.
 
Yeah a large amount of solid CO2 sublimating can definitely be dangerous in confined areas. So is liquid nitrogen as it evaporates. We have oxygen monitors at work near the LN2 dewars for that exact reason!
 
Vincerama2 said:
Off topic, but some Russian i fluencer had a birthday party at a spa and her husband tossed huge chunks of dry ice into the hot tub. It made a lot of “smoke” and three people, including th husband, jumped in. Two of them die as they surfaced and took in lungfuls of co2 instead of air. Everyone else barely made it out of the room.
Click to expand...
Yeah I can see that, definitely have seen people do that with swimming pools and not die probably because much larger area for the CO2 to spread out. That said solid CO2 (dry ice) is quite a bit more CO2 than normally is in air, normally oxygen is like 500x more abundant than CO2 that said, air a foot of the ground probably isn't significantly greater in CO2 than 5 feet off the ground.... unless you throw a few pounds of dry ice in the area :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top