DIY yeast CO2 for the planted tank

cableguy69846

cableguy69846

Member
OK. A couple of you asked for a thread on how to make a DIY yeast CO2 reactor. So here goes. Now, this is not my design, I used a design I had seen floating around the planted tank forums and tweeked it to my own desire. It is pretty simple and straight forward.

This design is pretty basic. Here is what you will need:

2x 2 liter bottles with caps
1 gatorade bottle, or another small bottle with a larger cap
airline tubing
airline "T" connector
check valve
airstone or some type of similar device
yeast
sugar

Here are the tools you will need:
drill with bit
scissors
pliars, needle nose work best

First you want to make sure all your bottles are clean. You can use soap, but don't use a ton, and make sure you rinse them out really well. Don't want that to end up in the tank.

Next, drill a hole in each of the 2 liter bottle caps. For this, I used a bit that fit snugly in the airline to make the holes.
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And used pliars to hold the cap.
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This is what it will look like with the hole.
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After you drill the hole, you want to cut the end of your airline at an angle and pull it through the hole about an inch or so. This is where the needle nose pliars come in handy.
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Repeat the above steps for the second bottle.

After you are done with that, you want to drill 2 holes in the lid to the gatorade bottle. This bottle is going to act as a bubble counter.

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Connect both 2liter bottles with the "T" connector and then run your airline into the gatorade bottle. It should go all the way to the bottom of the bottle.

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The other hole in the gatorade bottle is going to be the line to the tank. You want to add your check valve in that line, and your air stone (or other diffuser) to that line.

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The line from the mix bottles is on the right, the line to the tank is on the left.
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Fill the gatorade bottle 3/4 with water and close it up. Fill your 2liter bottles with water about 3 or 4 inches from the cap. You don't want any of the sugar yeast mix getting in the tank.

Add yeast and sugar to both 2 liter bottles and shake. It helps to have another cap that will fit both 2liter bottles for this. As for yeast and sugar, I use 1 cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon of yeast. After all that you should be good to go. And it should look like this.
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It will take a little bit for the gas to build up enough to start going into the tank. Just be patient, it will work.

Easy as that. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. :D
 
how often do you replace the sugar and yeast?
Is the bubble counter just there so you can see it working or do you actually measure the amount of CO2 and regulate that way? I'm doing this tonight because now that I have my NC sitting next to my 30cyl guppy tank it looks like crap. I think if I dose fert and do this, it will help.

Thanks for posting!
 
i like the tiger computer, do you need to do this for just a few plants or only a horde of them? ive never used co2 before so i have no idea
 
Lil BamBam said:
Very interesting!!! Do you have to control how much CO2 goes in?
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I don't control it, but if you wanted to, you could add a valve of some sort inline. IME, this thing does not put out enough gas to nuke your tank in anything 10gallons or above. I did gas a 2gallon and 2.5 gallon tank with this setup though. And you don't have to run two bottles of mix. I ran a one bottle setup on my 10gallon for a while. If you want to get really fancy, you can look into the paintball setup. I may have a link for that that I can post later, and there is fancier still with an actual CO2 setup specific for the planted tank with celenoid and all that. Plus then there are other mixtures too, that will make the gas a little more consistent and last longer and all that. I have not really messed around with all of it though. I found this works well for me, so I stuck with it. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.)
 
Herbie said:
how often do you replace the sugar and yeast?
Is the bubble counter just there so you can see it working or do you actually measure the amount of CO2 and regulate that way? I'm doing this tonight because now that I have my NC sitting next to my 30cyl guppy tank it looks like crap. I think if I dose fert and do this, it will help.

Thanks for posting!
Click to expand...

You can use it to actually count bubbles. It will usually put out between 1 and 3 bps (bubbles per second) but I don't pay attention to it really. The bubble counter also acts as a filter to keep the yeast/sugar out of the tank. What kind of light do you have on the guppy tank? And you will know if you are doing too much CO2. Your fish will start to breath heavily and stay near the surface and still. It may take them some time to get used to it.

Tethered_Limbs said:
i like the tiger computer, do you need to do this for just a few plants or only a horde of them? ive never used co2 before so i have no idea
Click to expand...

I usually change out both bottles once a week. On alternating days so the gas stays constant a little more. But it is really up to you. In my experience, I would only use it on a heavily planted tank. For a few plants, it will help, but the plants will not use all of it, and the gas will build up and could nuke your tank. To counter this on the other hand, you can run an air pump at night when the lights are off. That is when plants resperate and give off CO2 any way. If you want to better monitor it, get a drop checker. It will tell you how much CO2 is in your water at all times.
 
two intresting points with the Co2 setup

1. there is no need to use the second bottle as the bubble counter you can just do it with one bottle of mix directly into the tank but run the rick of letting yeast into the tank .. happened to me :)

2. when you use a normal diffuser with so2 setup the diffuser actually breaks after a month .. so its always good to use a co2 diffuser ..
 
tinman said:
two intresting points with the Co2 setup

1. there is no need to use the second bottle as the bubble counter you can just do it with one bottle of mix directly into the tank but run the rick of letting yeast into the tank .. happened to me :)

2. when you use a normal diffuser with so2 setup the diffuser actually breaks after a month .. so its always good to use a co2 diffuser ..
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This is true. That is the main use of the smaller bottle. It is also good for the counting of bubbles though.

From what I have seen from other people using them, wooden air stones work better, CO2 diffusers better still. I just get the cheap air stones. Sometimes you will get a decent life out of them. The one in the picture I have been using as long as I have had the system set up. So, sometimes it works and sometimes not so much.

Thanks for the input tinman. :)
 
As much as I love diy, go with a regulator with a solenoid and a reg co2 tank. The inconsistency with the diy is a major pain. The upfront cost is worth it, if you need co2. If you're running medium to high light and want to keep certain plants, then co2 might be necessary...

I'm definitely not knocking the info from the OP, just an opinion from a planted tank person :)
 
jayjigga said:
As much as I love diy, go with a regulator with a solenoid and a reg co2 tank. The inconsistency with the diy is a major pain. The upfront cost is worth it, if you need co2. If you're running medium to high light and want to keep certain plants, then co2 might be necessary...

I'm definitely not knocking the info from the OP, just an opinion from a planted tank person :)
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more. Not to mention, if you run this setup long term, it will work out to be more expensive than a decent CO2 system. However, the spread out cost is appealing to some, like me, and it is a good way to introduce yourself to CO2 without spending an arm and a leg. :)
 
I had heard of a DIY setup like this. Wish I would have found it before I spent $80.00 on my co2 setup for my planted tank. That's pretty slick and the tutorial was very nice. Thanks for the info.
 
critter243 said:
I had heard of a DIY setup like this. Wish I would have found it before I spent $80.00 on my co2 setup for my planted tank. That's pretty slick and the tutorial was very nice. Thanks for the info.
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well, if you wanna keep up with the reactor changes this is very nice .. i am using this now but i would still like the co2 setup :)

what kinda co2 setup did you buy for 80 ?
 
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