Refilling CO2 tanks

[michika]

Hey,

I know there is an Oxypro in the SE industrial park, but what other options do I have to fill a 5lbs tank?

[Delphinus]

The Recharge Centre, it's only place I bother dealing with these days. They're near the Blackfoot Inn. They'll claim it will take at least a week, but they've always had it done for me in 2-3 days tops.

[mike31154]

Perhaps a little off topic and I really know nothing about CO2 systems for marine tanks, but the other day I came across some info on very simple DIY CO2 set ups. Seems our freshwater hobby friends have been developing this methodology for some time for their planted tanks. Sugar, yeast, water and a few other items and you have a CO2 source for several weeks. Not sure if this is at all feasible for our side of the hobby, particularly for larger systems, just throwing this out there to see if anyone does this for sw.

Search DIY CO2 and there's lots of info.

[Delphinus]

Unfortunately it is not feasible whatsoever, sorry to say. Generally speaking anyhow. Reactors run at a fairly high pressure which you won't get out of a pop bottle. The FW DIY jobs are low pressure situations where they bubble right into the water column. Even if you could dial in a reactor to run at a low enough pressure to accept bubbling in from the yeast, you'd never get a steady state situation because the pressure will vary over the lifespan of the yeast (ie., it will never be the same day to day) so you'll not really get worthwhile results out of the reactor.

FWIW, I had to run my regulator at close to 20psi to get consistent bubble rates and flowrates. (I don't run a reactor anymore, I've switched to 2-part dosing. Sold the reactor and plunked the CO2 onto my planted FW!)

[mike31154]

Ah so, thanks for that.