Raising the Stakes

Upset that my drop checker was not budging from blue (although I measured the pH down in the 7.2-7.4 range a couple days ago), I decided Tuesday morning to jack up the CO2 rate by raising the regulated gage pressure 40 psi. If there's any kind of linear correlation between pressure and bubble rate, I should emit 33% more bubbles.

After the first day, I did not see any marked improvement in the drop checker color, but I did notice considerably more pearling; especially on plants where it doesn't usually occur. Tonight, I still saw lots of pearling, and I might have even seen the drop checker move off of blue and become something of a sea green. The red lotus is taking on a real deep red, and the leaves are really stretching out and expanding.

The Foster & Smith magazine I get offers very reasonably priced Azoo pumps, so I may have to replace my Rio pump. Hopefully, I could get something more powerful to increase the efficiency of the CO2 diffuser, but at the very least, I'd like to get something a little quieter.

Also, the curviceps are looking really brilliant lately. The "female" is much lighter on the bottom half of her body, almost an iridescent blue. The "male's" stripes are very well defined, and tend to appear to stretch down further than the female's. Both of their dorsal fins are quite colorful when unfurled.