DIY CO2 and PH

[aqua_chem]

Not much pressure, unless you have a pretty gnarly balloon, in which case the construction methods use to attach the balloon to the the tank will probably fail long before the pressure is built up, either by leakage or attachment failure. Your average party balloon is very contractile, and won't cause much resistance to inflation. In this case, it's essentially a constant pressure, variable volume physics problem. Essentially, as long as the balloon can inflate, it will be at room pressure inside the balloon.

 

[wildroseofky]

Okay I set up the CO2 yesterday. Here is the photo.
I don't have a shutoff valve yet so I couldn't test out the shutting it off at night part. I did add a balloon in preparation for that. The balloon didn't affect the CO2 pressure at all. I am using a plastic shot glass with filter felt in it to diffuse the CO2. That is it in the front of the photo. It does a pretty good job. I wasn't able to get a good shot of the bubbles but there are a lot of them. The jug is brown because I used brown sugar. I was out of the white sugar. Seems to be working fine. The bubbles are not as fine as what comes out of the cigarette filter stuck in the end of the tubing but smaller than what comes out of an air stone. I made another diffuser by shortening the shot glass and adding a bunch of cigarette filters to the end of it instead of the filter pad. I might try stopping the CO2 flow by folding the line in to tonight to see how the balloon thing works out. Will give an update when I get the shutoff valve.

 

[wildroseofky]

I bent the tubing in half last night and secured it with a rubber band to cut off the CO2 going into the tank. The balloon inflated to about golf ball size. Everything was all right this morning. I unbent the tubing and gently squeezed the balloon to get the CO2 flowing again and everything is working fine. The balloon has slowly been deflating. I think this could be a solution for shutting off diy co2 at night. I am going to try and find a shut off valve today. I was thinkng that those water balloons that kids fill with water and throw at each other would be better than a party balloon. Much thicker.

 

[phin]

have you tried increasing your bicarbonate buffers? What is the KH of your tank? Instead of turing off your DIY CO2 at night or diverting it, you should be able to increase the KH of your tank, which will guard agains a pH drop over night.

 

[aqua_chem]

If the balloon only swelled to the size of a golf ball, it was probably leaking somewhere. You should get a lot more build up than that.

The issue with turning of CO2 is really actually quite simple... just have a checkvalve between the gas separator/bubble counter and the tank where you can unplug the reactor at night.

 

[fort384]

Or just run an airstone at night on a timer and then you never have to remember to turn things off and on. I agree if it was only the size of a golfball it leaked somewhere which means it is probably leaking during the day too.

 

[aqua_chem]

Maybe, maybe not. That kind of diffuser, if it works, will have almost no pressure buildup, so it might only build up enough pressure to leak when it's blocked off.

 

[fort384]

The "size of a golfball" to me means the leak doesn't take hardly any pressure build at all to bleed off.

 

[aqua_chem]

That's a fair point. You're probably right about that.

 

[wildroseofky]

The problem was with my yeast. The package had been open for a couple of weeks. I added 2 teaspoons of yeast and got almost no action. I also think my use of brown sugar may have not gotten things off to a good start. I got more yeast and sugar today. I also picked up a gange valve. Just mixed the sugar and yest about 20 minutes ago. Waiting for something to happen. I also didn't have a very good seal in the yest bottle for the tubing. Fixed that as well. Now to see what happens.

 

[phin]

I don't know what kind of yeast you got, but active dry yeast has worked well for me. Rapid rise doesn't seem to work as well. Store any unused yeast in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

 

[wildroseofky]

I used a generic quick rise yeast the first try. It worked fine in my experimental setup but it was opened two weeks ago and I didn't refrigerate it. I remixed it the bottle last night and used a new package of regular yeast. I sealed this packet up and will put it in the fridge to keep it fresh.

I picked up a gang valve yesterday and added it to my diy system. I shut if off last night and the balloon did its job and held the CO2 until this morning. The balloon fully inflated in about 6 hours. I just used a party balloon. I think I really need a larger balloon. I am going to pick up a pack of mixed size balloons next week. When I opened the shut off valve the CO2 slowly emptied out of the balloon over a period of a couple of hours. I am getting about 3 bpm right now. My home made diffuser isn't working that great. In the 10 gallon it made lots of fine bubbles. The 29 gallon is deeper and I am not getting the same results. I get a stream of larger bubbles instead of a diffusion of small ones. If I put the diffusser on the bottom of the tank I get no bubbles. The pressure is too much for the diy system to force out the CO2. I tried floss, cigarette filters bunched together, a piece of sponge, and filter padding. The filter padding did the best. I added a piece of old fish netting to the top of it to catch the bubbles. It is holding the bubbles like a CO2 bell and the net breaks them up some. I will post pictures later. I have been on the road all day and I am too tired to fool with it right now.

 

[wildroseofky]

Finally took pictures of my setup. I was having trouble with the diffuser part. My 29 g is a lot deeper than my 10 g and the diffuser I was using for the 10 g wouldn't work. I couldn't get enough pressure. Then I realized I had two impeller motors from the underground filter that came with the tank I was given. I took one of them and fed the CO2 tubing into the top of the intake. My tank is now covered with micro bubbles. So far the fish are doing great. PH has dropped a little but I have buffering material in the filter. PH went from 7.6 to 7.2. Of course I haven't had a full day of running the CO2. I keep playing around with it trying to get things to work the way I want.

The balloon and shutoff valve idea is working so far. I shut off the diverted valve at night and the CO2 pulls in the balloon. In the morning I open the valve and the balloon slowly deflates. I sometimes had to squeeze the balloon at first to get the flow started but after that it works fine. My room gets cool at night and the CO2 production slows way down so the balloon hasn't fully inflated for the last couple of days. One night the temps stayed in the 80's and the balloon fully expanded. I am going to look for some thicker balloons. The cheap ones I bought are so thin that I am afraid the constant inflating and deflating will bust it.
In the photos I have the bottles from my 10 g hooked into the 29 g system. I took it off the 10 g because I will be using the 10 for a QT tank. After the small bottles go bad I am going to take them off and just use the large bottle.