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Diy Co2 Diffuser

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luckyliam13

luckyliam13

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Clarence Town NSW Australia
hey guys have been looking into planted aquariums and aparently the secret is co2. so i have been looking into making a co2 generater / difuser. basically a plastic bottle with sugar/yeast/water soulution with plastic piping leading to the fish tank. just wanted to no if any one actually runs a setup like this and if their is any risks involved for my fish ??

kind regards liam m :)
 
I've been using one for about 2 months now,the only risk to the fish I can see happening on mine is if I blink,the plants will FILL the tank :blink: :lol:
 
hey
ive had my DIY CO2 running for 6 days now and can already see a difference in the plants. I only have an air stone on the end of the tubing at the minute, but plan on getting a nice looking glass diffuser when i can afford one.
I was worried about the yeast water leaking in to the tank, and noticed a film on top of the water the other day but i did a water changed, got the film off with some kitchen roll and everything is fine now. Although, i did accidently knock the bottle over with the hoover earlier and had to run for my life with the bottle and the tube into the garden before all the yeast water poared into the tank haha. dont trust it enough yet to put it in the cupboard :lol:
 
I have the outlet of mine fed to the venturi of an aquaclear powerhead,and I've seen on here that some put it to the intake of external filters
 
haha hey guys mine doesnt seem to be producing any Co2 lol :) what did you put in the bottle?? i just put 2 cups sugar 1 teaspoon yeast half teaspoon baking powder ?? is this what you guys are using or is it wrong lol followed a ytube vid to make mine so ??? :p

kind regards liam m
 
No hops in this mix Aston. Yes we are fermenting the sugar and taking off the CO2 for the plants. The sugar water is a nasty mess when you are done producing the CO2 and is bad enough smelling that I like to only use DIY in the summer.
There are two common problems using DIY CO2. The first is a leak in the tubing somewhere. It takes only a small leak to lose all of the co2 that you are generating. The second problem is failing to use the package directions to "activate" the yeast before adding it to your mix. The essence of it is to use slightly warm water to get the yeast going before adding it into the rest of the mix (I don't recall the activation details after all this time). Unless the yeast is properly activated, it will take forever to get going.
 
hey guys i remade my home brew lol :p i used hot filtered water to disolve the sugar this time. i then dechlorinated the water. i figured that chlorine would kill the yeast since it is after all a bacteria. i added the yeast when it was luke warm this time instead of the water being cold. it is now up and running fully and has started to produce a white foam :) it has been running for 2 hrs now and is producing 3 bubles every 15sec :) its doing this in bursts since the piping i am using is fairly long :( ive posted some photos of my brewary as my dad calls it :p

kind regards liam m
 

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What do the bubbles do when they enter the aquarium water via the lily pipe?
Is this on a low light tank? If so, dosing liquid carbon would be so much eaier/better. :)
 
its not super bright just got 2 standard 2.5 foot bulbs one with a blue filter. the bubbles just float up into the path of the filter outlet and disperse. im new to live plants so i decided to go with just cheap plants to see how they went i got 5 giant vall and two baby amzon swords from my two foot tank :) this co2 thing was just and experiment to see if it would help the plants grow :)

kind regards liam m

ps tips on plants in generall would be greatly apreciated :)
 
Just make sure you run 2 bottles, yeast(etc) in your tank is not good.


Before I plumbed in the second bottle...


And how I normally run it...


Ignore the control valve, you cannot slow down the yeast production by this and it will only increase pressure in the bottle (to the point it will blow your pipes out), actually the valve was releasing gas so no back pressure was being created, only meant to use it to stop gas escaping when I wanted to move it around etc but that didn't work obviously so use a pipe clamp instead.

Been running it through a standard air stone, but they tend to go a little funny (white fur). I do intend to put a glass diffuser (cheap one from china has got to be better than a regular airstone). Whole lot is not running currently as I am running 2 filtration methods before I pull the old so no space.
 
The simplest diffuser I have found is a porous wood air stone that is called limewood. It produces very fine bubbles that dissolve easily. The porous glass diffusers require more pressure to work right than a typical DIY fermentation will produce.
 
I use a glass diffuser on my diy co2, it's made by aquagro and it says for all co2 systems on the box. So I gave it a try and it looks and works great, BUT (yep always a but) oldman47 is correct when he says that they need alot of pressure to work, had a few probs getting it going due to leaks in the system, super glue solved them, then when I first changed the co2 yeast bottle the back pressure blew the yeast mix all over the place like a mad volcano ha ha ha.

Todays job, fighting with an indian fern (Ceratopteris Thalictroides) to let light in my tank, this plant goes really mad with co2 :)
 
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