DIY co2 injecter

[oscarbreeder]

just finished making my DIY co2 injector and I am not getting any bubbles.
What could be the problem?
THANKS

[shawmutt]

It takes about 24-48 hours for a steady stream of bubbles. If it still isn't bubbling, you have a leak. Put a regular cap on it and gently squeeze the bottle and listen for air. If there's a leak in the bottle you're going to need another bottle, I tried to seal a hole in mine but it didn't work because the pressure's too great. If it's in the cap you can try to reseal it. If there's definitely no leaks, make sure you used fresh yeast. What is your mixture? I used 2 cups of sugar in 6 cups of water, with a tsp of yeast and a tsp of baking soda.

[vega]

I am using without baking soda. Wat are the baking soda for btw?

[BillyZ]

I just made a 2 liter DIY co2 joby last night. I used your recipe shawmutt, except that I used a whole 1/4 oz package of fliechman's active dry yeast. which I measured out to be about 2 1/2 tsp.

I was getting some serious bubble action in less than 3-4 hours!

when mixing, add luke warm water, sugar and baking soda, cap with a solid cap and mix completely. Add the yeast and mix well again.

Then cap with your tube cap and await your bubbles. The warm water bit is a tip from baking. warm water wakes up the yeast a little bit faster.

Do you think using a whole package was too much yeast? I'm using a regular air stone on the DIY co2 bottle. I'm getting a good heavy stream of bubbles. Think this would be enough? and do you think using that much yeast they'll be using up their sugar supply too quickly?

[justDIY]

Originally Posted by BillyZ

Do you think using a whole package was too much yeast? ... and do you think using that much yeast they'll be using up their sugar supply too quickly?

deffinately way too much dude

that yeast will consume it's food or give itself alcohol poisioning within a few days to a week

for more CO2, make more bottles, instead of trying to "overdrive" a single bottle. Yeast isn't producing pure co2 either, there is a lot of regular air (left from the bottle) and water-vapor in the gas, not to mention alcohol vapor.

also, a regular air stone, bubbling away is having two negative effects. Firstly, the co2 isn't having much time to dissovle on it's mad-dash to the surface. Second, the bubbling action is causing water turbulance, and actually driving off co2!

try placing your air stone so the bubble get "sucked in" to a filter of any sort - this should greatly increase the efficeny for you.

hope this helps! :P

[BillyZ]

that yeast will consume it's food or give itself alcohol poisioning within a few days to a week

Yea thats kinda what I thought as soon as I saw how fast it was working. How long do your bottles usually last with the above recipe?

try placing your air stone so the bubble get "sucked in" to a filter of any sort - this should greatly increase the efficeny for you.

This is actualy what I tried doing first. For some reason my filter intake wasn't pulling the bubbles in. So for now it's just bubbling into the tank. I'll probably tap a hole into the filter intake and physicaly place the airstone in the bottom of the intake. I'm hoping this plus the recent addition of another 20watt bulb will help my plants some. They're starting to thin out quite a bit