DIY CO2 Not Producing

[Purrbox]

Before moving I never had a single batch of CO2 fail on me, now I can't seem to get a single one to produce. I do dose Flourish Excel so hopefully that will give me some extra leaway until I can get the DIY CO2 fixed.

I've got a feeling it might be that the old water was 300ppm GH and the new water is 140ppm GH. Would adding a bit of Baking Soda be a good idea? The KH is approximately the same between both locations, so I'm not so sure that the Baking Soda would actually do that much. The full list of parms for the new water is available in this thread.

Any ideas?

 

[An t-iasg]

You are probably much better at making the yeast mix than I am

When I make mine, I never did use tap water. I use RO water. I add the sugar and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda into the Hagen canister and mix together with a long-handled spoon. Then I heat up the RO water in the microwave, check the temp with a digital thermometer (I get good results from about 95 degrees F), add the yeast to the water, stir for 10 minutes (not constantly!) and add the yeast-water mix to the canister. I stir again with the spoon and put the lid on.

This mix always does well for me - it lasts about 30 days. I need to change it, according to the calendar, today or tomorrow, but at last check it's bubbling away quite happily!

I remember you saying that you used a mix of tap and RO water before. Do you still have the RO unit? If you do, try a batch using that and see how it does for you. I get my RO at the grocery store.

 

[czcz]

Maybe the yeast is dead?

 

[Purrbox]

When I was mixing RO water, it was grocery store bought. The funny thing is the first two batches of DIY CO2 that I put together were with straight RO water (since I hadn't had a chance to test the tap water yet and was very tired) and the second two were with straight tap water. I'd forgotten that I'd used different water. On all four batches I foamed the yeast for 30min - 60min in tepid sugar water before adding it to the bottles.

I'm kinda leaning towards the possibility that the yeast may be dead (possibly something about the move killed it) since all four batches came from the same sachet which was opened before the move. To test this, should I add 1/8 tsp of yeast to each of the bottles from a brand new sachet or mix up entirely new batches?

 

[czcz]

I would just add the new yeast.

 

[Purrbox]

I added an 1/8 tsp of yeast to each of the bottles from a new packet tonight, hopefully there'll be bubbles by tomorrow night.

 

[Purrbox]

Well the CO2 bottles hooked up to the 5 Gal are definately producing CO2 now. Unfortunately it looks like the airline came loose from the diffuser, so it's leaking out the connection instead of producing a fine mist from the diffuser. :? Guess I'm going to have to get my hands wet to get things working properly again.

The 2.5 Gal still doesn't appear to have much of anything happening. :x Sigh. I thought I saw a single bubble go up, but wasn't patient enough to keep watching long enough to find out for sure.

I may just do an extra early water change this weekend and see if I can't get everything back in working order again. I really hate moving.

EDIT - Well I was able to verify that the CO2 is definately producing in the 2.5 Gal now. Looks like dead yeast was the problem. I'll be thowing the yeast from that packet away. Thanks to everyone that helped me figure out what was going on!