The Editor
Aquarium Advice Activist
Hey everyone, I've been thinking today...
When we set up DIY fermenter's we deliberately seal the fermenter bottle to prevent loss of CO2 and to try and prevent unwanted bacteria setting up shop in our fermentation vessel.
Anaerobic respiration results in CO2 and ethanol being produced, while the CO2 is great, the ethanol build up in concentration until its at a level toxic to the yeast at which point it starts to die and we get no more CO2 so we re-charge the fermenter and go again...
Aerobic respiration produces water and CO2, and as long as there's food the yeast should be happy right?
The only way (that I can think of) of running a reactor aerobically is to use and air pump to bubble air through the yeast broth. This will result in greater agitation in the yeast broth, and the production of a CO2 rich stream of air...
This as I understand will be less desirable than pure CO2 as it will be harder to diffuse the same amount of CO2 into the water when it's in a smaller concentration in a bubble, however there will be a higher CO2 concentration in the water than had the air not have been bubbled through the yeast broth initially.
The main advantage I see in running this method is the lack of culture dying off due to ethanol toxicity. This would allow a humble aquarist to simply dose the yeast broth with sugar regularly to maintain a stable production of the CO2 rich stream.
Now I'm in no way experienced with planted tanks, so I may have completely missed some negatives to this method. In which case please point them out to me!
But as a complete novice looking to tread upon the first rung on the way to a fully planted high light tank, aerobic DIY fermentation doesn't seem like a bad idea...
Has anyone ever considered or even used this before?
When we set up DIY fermenter's we deliberately seal the fermenter bottle to prevent loss of CO2 and to try and prevent unwanted bacteria setting up shop in our fermentation vessel.
Anaerobic respiration results in CO2 and ethanol being produced, while the CO2 is great, the ethanol build up in concentration until its at a level toxic to the yeast at which point it starts to die and we get no more CO2 so we re-charge the fermenter and go again...
Aerobic respiration produces water and CO2, and as long as there's food the yeast should be happy right?
The only way (that I can think of) of running a reactor aerobically is to use and air pump to bubble air through the yeast broth. This will result in greater agitation in the yeast broth, and the production of a CO2 rich stream of air...
This as I understand will be less desirable than pure CO2 as it will be harder to diffuse the same amount of CO2 into the water when it's in a smaller concentration in a bubble, however there will be a higher CO2 concentration in the water than had the air not have been bubbled through the yeast broth initially.
The main advantage I see in running this method is the lack of culture dying off due to ethanol toxicity. This would allow a humble aquarist to simply dose the yeast broth with sugar regularly to maintain a stable production of the CO2 rich stream.
Now I'm in no way experienced with planted tanks, so I may have completely missed some negatives to this method. In which case please point them out to me!
But as a complete novice looking to tread upon the first rung on the way to a fully planted high light tank, aerobic DIY fermentation doesn't seem like a bad idea...
Has anyone ever considered or even used this before?