Redsea c02 question

[plark]

I have one of these systems on my planted tank and I know it takes sugar? and yeast? Can I go to the store and buy these instead of the 10$ refills? is there a certain sugar to use?

[underwaterforest]

You can get rid of the expensive red sea stuff and replace it with regular sugar (cane) from the store. For the yeast you can use bread yeast or wine yeast. Wine yeast is more useful because it can take higher concentrations of alcohol before it stops producing co2, meaning it will produce co2 for a longer amount of time. On the amount wise, I would add a little more cane sugar than the refill packet (I believe they use glucose so you need a little more sucrose (cane sugar) to equal the co2 produced). You only need to add a little bit of the yeast say an 1/8-1/16 of a tsp to the bottle to get it rolling.

Another techniques to make the co2 last longer is to add more sugar than normal to your bottle and DON"T MIX IT and slowly add the water. What this will do is slowly give the yeast more sugar as the sugar in suspension is used up. A shake every now will mix up more sugar from the bottom of the bottle and the yeast will start producing co2 again.
HTH

Alex

[plark]

so while i was refilling with what you said I had an idea.... why don't they pressurize that small tank that makes c02 with a small air pump.... wouldnt that make it more effective?

[underwaterforest]

I'm not quite sure what you are asking. There really isn't any reason to add air to the container, since you are making co2. Adding air would just dilute the co2 being made. Once the fermentation starts the yeast will produce co2 and pressurize and purge the air from the bottle. The yeast can create pressure so high that it will explode a weak bottle if it gets plugged up. Oxygen does help with the initial life cycle of yeast so it could help speed up the lag time for the yeast, but shaking the bottle does this too. To always make sure you have co2 running you can make another reaction bottle out of a plastic soda container so you have no down time. I like to start my new bottle a day or two before the old one starts to slow down.

You can also buy small "paintball" co2 tanks and they sell similarly small regulators for them. The larger CO2 tank method is what I use now and I love it, I'm lazy at heart so having to only mess with my co2 every 6-8 months suit me fine. HTH

[colinlp]

Don't pressurize that tank whatever you do. If is doesn't explode you run the risk of pumping yeast into your aquarium

[Greenheinie]

When I did DIY CO2, I tried every recipe I could find on the internet. Sugar/water/yeast, jell-o, some crazy contraption which included mollasas/protein powder/baking soda, dry yeast, bread yeast, beer yeast I use for my other hobby...I tried it all.

Plain ol' sugar/water/yeast (Fleischman's bread yeast usually found by the eggs in the supermarket) worked best for me and was the easiest.

I too got sick of mixing ingredients every weekend and switched to pressurized.

[exv152]

so while i was refilling with what you said I had an idea.... why don't they pressurize that small tank that makes c02 with a small air pump.... wouldnt that make it more effective?

You won't need to presurize the tank with a pump, the CO2 produced from the mixture will do that all on its own. Plain old Fleischmann's active dry yeast is best, and just use plain sugar, it's cheaper and more effective.