I’m very excited to share this with the Planted Tank community. For decades, we’ve been estimating our CO₂ injection rates with bubble counters. Bubble counters are great at telling us whether our CO₂ is flowing, but they are barely helpful when we need to adjust our CO₂ flow rate. We usually start with a recommended BPS that is just a rough estimate which varies depending on who we asked or which article/post/blog we read. What makes matters worst is that bubble counters BPS vary depending on their brand, model, type and quality (manufacturing consistency).

The quickest route after that is to measure for a pH drop every hour or so. Some of us spend hours, if not days, watching out for gasping fish.

We can’t really avoid that when we’re setting up the CO₂ for a new tank the first time, but it would be nice if we can get a more precise range of starting rates. What if we change our CO₂ regulator, or bubble counter, or switched from a diffuser to a reactor or vice versa? Maybe we accidentally turned the needle valve or had to repair the regulator because of a leak. We shouldn’t have to go through all that again if we have already dialled in our CO₂ flow rate before.

Well, now we don’t have to. Let me introduce my CO₂ Flow Checker (I would love to call it a CO₂ Flow Meter, but something else is already called that). With this, we can measure our CO₂ flow in ml/min (millilitres per minute) or whatever volume per minute works for you. Once we’ve dialled in our CO2, measure it once with this device and record it down somewhere. The next time you need to reset your CO₂ flow, just hook it up again and tweak it back in a matter of minutes.

I’ll let my video do the rest of the talking: