watched how to make homemade CO2 from Dustin

Watched how to make homemade CO2 from Dustin, but how you attach it to your tank wasn't covered, any advice?

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Permalink Reply by Tom Talamantes on August 3, 2014 at 3:58am

sweet advice, thanks. Just got the yeast, sugar, and molasses to make it and gonna pipe it tomorrow! I did see something else about using baking soda, but I'm going to stick to Dustin's homemade co2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTc8prHJSIs, if it doesn't work i'll try it out with baking soda.

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Permalink Reply by john walden on August 6, 2014 at 7:12am

home made co2 as in two bottles with airline sugar and yeast ? the way i did it when i first started was run the airline up the back of my aquarium attach with with suction cup that had a hole throught the nipple on the back and the same way once the airline was inside the aquarium. then i put a airstone on the tip.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Talamantes on August 6, 2014 at 2:12pm

yeah, I've seen two recipes. One uses yeast, sugar, and baking soda. The other uses yeast, sugar, and molasses (the molasses is to feed the yeast). I ended up not using it anymore tho, I hit my plants with the CO2 to get them to grow strong then I took it out and switched back to an air pump with airstone and left it running for 2 days before adding some fish in just so they wouldn't get CO2 poisoning. Everything is doing good right now, no algae, plants growing good and fish all look healthy so I think I got the balance I was going for. Thanks for replying!

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Permalink Reply by john walden on August 6, 2014 at 5:27pm

the process happens from the sugar being eaten by the yeast so no need to feed it this was one of the first methods i used when i first did my planted .

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Permalink Reply by LED on August 7, 2014 at 10:46am

Your tank wont get co2 poisoning as long as you have a decent amount of plants, and you have decent water hardness.

(if you add co2 to distilled water it will become more acidic faster than if you added co2 to tap water or water that has a bit of magnesium salts, calcium, and various carbonates)

also yes an air pump at night will be fine but you dont need to run it all the time. =)

sounds like you're doing great so far =)

as for why they add baking soda to co2 reactors is to increase the pH in the solution. If the solution becomes too acidic then the yeast dies. Adding baking soda stabilizes the solution as well as slow down the production of co2 to make it more steady.

Also remember that temperature of the co2 reactor solution greatly affects the co2 output. The warmer it is the more it will put out co2, as well as how fast the solution will be used up.

Happy tanking