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CO2 Tubing pinprick sized leak

A

asendedtrunks

Seedling
Joined
10 Mar 2021
Messages
3
Location
Portsmouth, United Kingdom
Hello all,

I was hoping to be able to get some advice on reasons why my CO2 tubing keeps developing pinhole sized leaks. I am currently using the complete nano co2 kit from co2supermarket which I have had for about 1.5 years now and I am having to replace the tubing between the bubble counter and diffuser around every 3-4 months currently as I keep noticing small tiny pinprick sized holes appearing in the tubing (which I can visibly notice as bubbles leaking out of the tubing in the aquarium). Each time I have replaced this tubing I have tried relocating it to a different place in the aquarium to try to figure out what might be causing the issue. So far the short length of tubing I have between the regulator and the bubble counter has been fine.

The leak tends to appear in the tubing located in the actual water of the aquarium, roughly 4-5 inches from the diffuser. Though once I have had the leak appear in the tubing outside the water closer to the bubble counter which was much more annoying as the only way I recognised this had happened was because my canisters were not lasting as long.

Some thoughts and things I have tried so far:
  • I have a Fluval Flex 57L so I tried routing the tubing to the separate back compartment with the filter in and the issue still occurred - I thought this would rule out any UV/heat/light damage?
  • The Fluval Flex has a lid and I need to remove this lid for water changes/maintenance etc. - I can't visibly see much stress being put on the tubing when I remove this lid but I suppose it's possible a small amount of movement is happening - is this possibly a cause, it seems unlikely to me?
  • I purchased new black tubing from co2supermarket to see if perhaps it was a bad batch of tubing but same problem.
  • I haven't tried a different retailers tubing yet, however from what I can see on these forums and others it seems co2supermarket is a genuine and respected retailer of aquarium CO2 products.

Just wanted to know if anyone had any advice or opinions on this problem, I don't know if I am doing something wrong?

Thanks for any input.
 
Very surprised to hear of pinholes or small cracks in the tubing. The tubing usually used is Polyurethane, quite thick wall section (1mm), so would be surprised if this was due to fatigue caused by stress, it's very heavy duty stuff. I've used loads in industry and never seen any degradation.

It sounds as if it seems to occur more in the water contacting sections of tubing? If you look online for information on the degradation of Polyurethane it can be caused by Microbial growth, some articles describe this when PU tubing is used in soil irrigation. I don't know enough about the subject, but can't think what else could be causing damage to such a thick tube. But I'm sure if there were some growths involved, you would notice some discoloration of the tube, maybe?

It might be worth trying another supplier, maybe there is some contamination in the PU, seems unlikely. You could move away from PU and try a PTFE section, but PTFE tubing is not very flexible and can be expensive. Hopefully others may be able to shed some light on causes too.

Other sources of contamination could be in the CO2, is it a fire extinguisher? Can't think there could be anything in the supply nasty enough to affect the tube. Have you noticed anything in the tubing?
 
What type of tubing are you using? Specific co2 tubing or airline tubing. Airline tubing is not suitable for co2 as it can leak through the material as the co2 molecules are small.
 
asendedtrunks said:
It's the one linked in my post from co2supermarket - 4/6mm Black Polyurethane CO2 Resistant Tubing.
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Sorry I missed that. I would then suggest contact them for some support I have the clear tubing from them with no issues. They have good customer service when I had adaptor issues.
 
Kevin Eades said:
Sorry I missed that. I would then suggest contact them for some support I have the clear tubing from them with no issues. They have good customer service when I had adaptor issues.
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No worries. Thanks for the suggestion, I probably should have mentioned in my original post that I have contacted them for support, but they also seemed puzzled and weren't able to offer any reason for this happening (other than possibly heat or light damage which I have already ruled out). They did offer a free adapter to DIN477 or sodatream as a gesture of goodwill as I also mentioned the nano cartridges weren't lasting as long as they had suggested, but this doesn't help with the tubing issues.
 
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