I've been thinking of getting a C02 diffuser for my planted tank for a while. Everyone claims it makes a BIG difference to the growth rate and lushness of the plants, so I figured... why not? I took a trip down to the LFS where I checked out a couple of commercial diffusers... $71?!! OUCH. After opening the box and checking out what i'd get for my $71 i discovered it was a glorified pop bottle, a small powerhead, and some sort of reagent. Hmm. I decided I'd save myself a few bucks and make my own. I bought the reagent, because i couldn't open it to see what it was, and it was only $7 on it's own, and I also bought some tubing, and some tube connectors (double male nipples).
Once at home I drilled a hole in the lid of a 2 litre pop bottle just big enough to push one of the connectors through. I sealed it with a little aquarium silicone. Then, I drilled two holes in a 1 litre pop bottle ( the lid is a little bigger) in one hole, i pushed a connector, in the other i pushed tubing in down to about an inch from the bottom of the bottle. I sealed both of these with silicone. Once the silicone dried, i put the commercial reagent into the bottle (it smelled an awful lot like sugar (about a cup) and yeast (about a teaspoon... imagine spending $7 for that?!! LOL) added the warm water and carefully swirled the mixture. I then half filled the 1 litre bottle with water and screwed on the lids and taped around them with black tape. I took the tubing that i had already connected to the 1 litre bottle and attached it to the nipple on the 2 litre bottle, and then attached another length of tubing to the 1 litre bottle and connected it to an airstone which i threw into my tank. Then, the waiting began... Nothing.. The commercial product didn't seem to work, so i threw it away (waste of $7 ) and put in a cup of white sugar and a tablespoon of instant yeast. Instantly the mixture began to froth. I sealed the bottles up again and watched the C02 bubble out into the tank. After a while, I removed the airstone and hooked the tubing directly to my powerhead.
The system seems to be working wonderfully and saved me about $60.
I hooked the two bottles together, because when i first did it, I only had one bottle and the mixture just about bubbled right out through the tubing and into my tank. Gasp** :shock: So i decided to hook the two together so that I had an airgap between the mixture and the tank. Saving myself a big mess and my fish from certain death!
This is relatively easy to do, and saves you a bunch of money! If anyone thinks this is a bad idea, I would love to hear from you! I'll let u know how my plants do, and try to take a picture of the setup. It's not pretty, but works wonderfully!
Nat. :beer: electronic_brick@hotmail.com
