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fire extinguisher co2

fishkeeper

Member
Joined
2 Apr 2008
Messages
198
im looking at making one of these. Am i right in think all i need is a fire extingusher and a regulator? (i already have the drop checker, diffuser and tubing)

how long would a 1kg extinguisher last on a 125l tank, as i dont have the space for a 2kg one a 1kg will have to suffice...

thanks

Will
 
That reg looks like one with a preset operating pressure, and the knob is just a form of needle valve, hence the lack of a guage for this. At the moment the jury is starting to question whether there really is a need for a cylinder pressure guage, given that when used on fire extinguishers or purpose made cylinders most people are finding that the pressure guage reads 50 bar right up until the cyclinder is empty, at which point it drops to 0. lol. So all a pressure guage often tells you is that your bottle is empty, if you hadn't already noticed this.....

Personally however I prefer a regulator where you can set the operating pressure yourself, I don't trust 'preset' things.

Ade
 
if i got a dual guage one wihout solenoid. If i set it to about 20 bubbles per second instead of 30, would i egt enough co2 in the tank? this is because without solenoid its cheaper and a solenoid would be used to turn it off t night but have it at about 30bps during the day so if i set it low- 20bsp i should be ok?

thanks

Will
 
20 bubbles per second would most likely kill your fish. lol. I think that you possibly mean either 20 bubbles per minute, or 2 bubbles per second.

If you are not going to use a solenoid then you will probably need an air pump to drive off excess CO2 at night, otherwise levels will get too high during lights out. Better to just us a solenoid on a timer though as this helps to reduce the amount of CO2 you waste at night. They aren't that expensive on ebay, Lunapet sell them for £21.36 including delivery from germany to the UK here. I have one of these and they are very quiet running.

Solenoids also stop your fish from getting gassed with CO2 in the event of a power failure as if the power goes off so does the CO2.

Ade
 
I think Will may be getting Bubbles Per Second (bps) and Parts Per Million (ppm) confused. Will most people here run their CO2 at 30ppm during the daylight hours. This high CO2 helps with lots of things such as reducing some nuisance algae such as BBA as well as making the plants grow very healthily. You measure the ppm by using a drop checker with 4dKH water in it. When the solution is green you have water with 30ppm CO2 in it. The drawback is that at night this can cause problems with too much CO2 in the water as the plants won't be utilising the CO2 being injected. For this reason those of us who use 30ppm CO2 use solenoids to turn off the CO2 at night. It also saves injecting CO2 that isn't being used at night.

If you want to run CO2 constantly (and some people think this is better BTW) then you need to run at a lower CO2 concrentration. Often people aim for around 1 bps and then don't really worry about the concentration of CO2. You pays your money and takes your choice!!! (But I'd go for the higher CO2 and turn it off at night! ;) )
 
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