DIY CO2... again

Heady

Heady

Cardinal Rule
Feb 22, 2003
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Pacific Northwest
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Well, here it is again. DIY CO2 question: Would it make sense to include DIY CO2 (yeast) on a 100 gallon tank? This tank is not set up yet.

Substrate: Onyx sand
Lighting: 4 x 55W compact fluorescents

I do not want to mess with CO2 cylinders. Should I just set up the tank and see how it does? Suggestions?
 
I'm sure it would be better than nothing, but a pressurized system would do much better, especially if you plan on using high lighting. DIY is fine, I use it on my 55, but on a 100..it might be pushing it quite a bit. You are going to need at least 6 liters....12 would be better...really depends on your reactor though...a good reactor makes a big difference. Me, I just drilled a small hole into the spraybar of my canister filter, and inserted the end of a check valve(and airline tubing going back to my bottles) into the hole in the spraybar....blowing a fine mist of bubbles out of the spraybar(1" under water) all over the tank....not as good as a reactor, but does fine for my med light 55.
 
Some people have suggested just sticking the tubing right into the canister intake. Good/Bad idea?

What if I just had two 2L bottles? It wouldn't be "enough", but would it help?
 
feeding the hose into a cannister intake is a very popular method used by many, including mysef at one point.

eheim is against this method, however, because it will damage the impeller over time. i can see where they are coming from. it gets dicey when you use a pressurized system and inject 3-5 bubbles per second, that's a lot of gas going into it.
 
You're going to have to have some sort of CO2 with two watts/gal., at least until you get a lot of plants well established. I had 4 bottles going in my 55 before I went pressurized, and with 4 I just about got the CO2 concentration I wanted.
If you use DIY in that big a tank I'd suggest you try atleast 4 bottles with two going into one reactor and two into another. Power heads blowing the CO2 bubbles into a small siphon tube with a sponge inserted in it do a great job for me, and this set up is pretty cheap.
I just hope you don't get as sick of mixing sugar and yeast as I did though. It gets old when you have to mix that much up.
Len
 
When you get in to that big a tank, your cost savings by using DIY kind of disappear. For that big a tank, I would think the cost of getting a pressurized unit would be minimal compared to the rest of the tank costs. You should be able to look around and do the pressurized for less than a hundred and fifty. If I were spending that much on a tank and then on enough plants to fill it, I'd budget in the pressurized just as a matter of course. I think just the potential loss of that many plants would tell you not to skimp on their basic needs. Your fish will also love it if you have a tank with flourishing plants.
 
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