I sampled this from a PDF I have on cultivation: "CO2 Supplementation yields dramatically larger flowers than growing without adding CO2. The idea is to replicate earlier geological conditions when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were higher and plants grew far larger than they do today. The ideal level of CO2 is between 1500-2000 ppm. There are many ways to add this CO2. CO2 moves very easily and weighs more than oxygen. Because of this you will want fans to be off during the period in which you are supplementing CO2. Because plants only utilize CO2 for photosynthesis you will only need to supplement during the lights on period." This seems to be saying that the fans must be off ALL day. CO2 is a daylight supplement and fans off during supplementation?!? Furthermore, the CO2 boosters that I am thinking of buying say to take the emission hose and hang it on the fan so as to blow it onto the plants. Any feedback might be helpful!
what they mean is, you want fans off while the co2 is in the process of being applied. that's why controllers include outlets for your fans. you want the co2 to fall down onto the plants, not be blown away from them. the only fan that will be left on while co2 is falling, is the exhaust for your air-cooled hood. (some may not agree with this, lol)
My CO2 is likely to be applied continuously with CO2 Boost. However this presents problems not the least of which is the statement that fans should be off during application. The CO2 Boost tutorial says, "Having your room sealed tightly is essential to containing Co2. Co2 can escape through the smallest of cracks, so make sure that your room is sealed as well as it can be. However, if you position your hose so the Co2 is in direct contact with your plants, you will see results regardless of how well your room is sealed." With a sealed room, the ONLY thing that the plants will get is CO2 - no oxygen for roots (unless the O2 produced by the plant is sufficient) and no nitrogen. Additionally, other plant wastes will not be flushed from the grow space. Also, my humidity will be difficult to control if I keep all spaces sealed. Just trying to make sense of it all. Anyone?
Few things are more of a rip-off then CO2 Boost. It will not enrich your grow room at all. It is one of the many shameless products people make to rip-off new growers. It will not even help a little. I could go into details if you require proof before being rolled for your hard earned cash.
Well, this is certainly a challenge to everything I have ever heard; after all, dry ice IS CO2 so the claim seems to be that supplementing CO2 won't do any good. Is this to say that the plant will normally never run into a ceiling as to the amount of it that can be processed?
Ok,,,,, Lots of stuff can produce CO2, and with enough of it one can reach enrichment levels. But at what cost? The cost: To find out how much it will cost, you have to know at what level of enrichment you can expect to see a positive result. Most folks agree that you will have measurable positive results at maintained 1200 PPMs of CO2. The increase will top out and level off around 1600 PPMs. How much dry-ice would you need to maintain 1400 PPMs for a 60 day flowering period? How much home brew/CO2-boost would it take to do the same while your ventilation cycles? Of the two above methods, dry-ice would work better and cost less. Your ventilation system will pull out all enrichment in less then 15 seconds. So to maintain enrichment you have to limit ventilation and be able to quickly replenish the enrichment levels when the fans cycle off. Not real easy. Is compressed CO2 cheaper then dry-ice or CO2-Boost? Much! Plus it works. When I say cheaper I don't mean cheap. No good working CO2 setup is cheap. But unlike dry-ice or CO2-Boost, compressed CO2 can replenish and maintain your minimum difference making CO2 levels. You would need a thousand dollars worth of the CO2-Boost buckets to maintain enrichment while cycling your ventilation system. You would need only a few hundred dollars of dry-ice to do the same. You have to remember that it cost me about $13 to fill a twenty pound tank of compressed CO2 and I use two of them for a 60 day flowering period. The folks who rave about CO2-Boost buckets are the folks selling them or folks who can't admit to being ripped off. How do I know? I have tried and tested most of the alternitive methods using two CO2 monitoring devices in a sealed grow room. CO2-Boost buckets and Green-Pads performed worse then cheap home brew or dry-ice. Dry-ice did the best but the cost is out of this world. Peace, R.
When they say trun the fans off, they mean exhaust fans that are pulling air outside of your room. You want fans blowing and mixing the air inside of your room when using CO2, otherwise it will just sink to the bottom of the room, and probably wont be doing your plants as much good as it can.