DIY CO2 and Bleach

jmhart

jmhart

Revolutionary
Sep 8, 2007
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Atlanta,GA
Anybody have any thoughts about whether a plastic soda bottle is permeable to bleach?

I have my yeast cannister's in a 5 gallong bucket with water and a heater. I had a slight growth develop. I was restoring/rebooting my yeast colony and at the same time I added a cap full of bleach to the ~3.5 gallons of water to try to eliminate any growth(yeast or any other bacteria). Since this moment, my yeast just aren't producing like they should. I've tried reactiving other yeast(I have experience doing this, so I know I'm activating correctly) and adding more sugar.

I did also add some undissovled sugar. Most of it did dissolve over time, but a slight layer covered my yeast(which settle to the bottom of the bottle) which required me to give the container a gentle tilt.

Any thoughts on where my woes may be starting? I hate to waste the yeast/sugar, but my thought is to start fresh, rinsing everything well, and not using bleach.

Any ideas on what else I could do to prevent growth in my water bath?
 
First I just want to state the obvious... Bleach comes in plastic bottles, so I would say no... it shouldn't permeate the plastic.

Second I would like to know why you are bathing the bottles in warm water in the first place? I assume to get them started, but isn't room temperature enough heat for yeast to grow?
 
I see the confusion. So, my setup. I have 2 2L bottles with my yeast/sugar. These run into my tank. However, after reading a lot of the comments in various DIY CO2 threads, I decided to put my yeast in a heated( 75 deg F) water bath. Some people suggested this for all situations, but I decided it would be best for me because I live in an old victorian without central heat or air. I'm in Bay Area, so it's not going to get that cold, but at night or in the heart of winter, the room where my tank is could drop down. I have my fish heated, so I figured why not heat my yeast.

Make sense?

Anyway, that is a good thought about the bleach bottles. Different types of plastic have differnt permeabilities to vapor. Coke goes flat because the plastic is(however slightly) permeable to CO2. It's funny, cause actually both of the bottles I use are from two never opened cokes. I had them for over a year and never opened them. When I finally opened them, they were flat. Permeability. This makes using coke bottles seem counterintuitive, however the permiation rate is so small compared to the amount you produce that it's insignificant.

Point is, I was curious whether bleach vapor could be passing through into my bottles. I think the answer is, maybe. Looks like I'll be scrapping this batch of yeast, rinsing out all the containers to eliminate bleach, and then proceeding.

Gar, I was hoping the bleach thing would work cause the "growth" was pretty slimmey.
 
it was a decent thought. there may be some other substance that would quell growth while keeping the yeast alive.


Odd thought: Can a bleach bottle be sufficiently cleaned to house the yeast and keep the small amount of bleach in the bath out of the yeast?
 
malken said:
Odd thought: Can a bleach bottle be sufficiently cleaned to house the yeast and keep the small amount of bleach in the bath out of the yeast?
Click to expand...

That's a thought. I'm not sure if I'd trust my rinsing ability to reuse a bleach bottle. In general, bottles like that should never be reused.

As a side note, my yeast picked up their production yesterday. It's not up as far as it can be/has been, but it's a start. I started a 3 day blackout last night to kill some algae, so I'll see what production is like on Friday morning.(3 days, 84 hours, what's the difference). Just in case(since I'm in the middle of killing algae), I've been "feeding" Flourish Excel.
 
nynikki said:
First I just want to state the obvious... Bleach comes in plastic bottles, so I would say no... it shouldn't permeate the plastic.

Second I would like to know why you are bathing the bottles in warm water in the first place? I assume to get them started, but isn't room temperature enough heat for yeast to grow?
Click to expand...


This is not always true. I work as a commercial water treatment design with Cu**igan. We have had issues where chemicals, hyperchlorate specifically, entered our 12 oz plastic bottles during sanitization and were found in trace amounts in our bottled water product. Not good. A 2 liter soda bottle can't completely impede the chl from absorbing into the plastic and thus into the yeast colony. And if added in higher amounts than 4ppm you could def. see issues even in a short amount of time.

In this case it sounds like either a lag of food (sugars), temperature, or airleak that has stunned the yeast colony.
 
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