Re: DIY C02 Recipe
Joetee said:
Hello,
Im real new here and have a few questions.
1. Can someone point me to a real good DIY C02 recipe for a 2 litre bottle?
2. What fert calculator is the most accurate and where can I find it. I heard that Chucks is full of discrepancies.
3. When dosing the EI method, figuring for a 29 gal tank, would I use the suggested level every time from the calculator?
Thanks so much.
Joe
There are lots of ideas for DIY CO2 online -- its fund reading them all.
Here is mine:
- 1 2L pop bottle
- 2L pop bottle, drink the contents
- rince with hot water from tap -- boiling water will melt the bottle, that's fun
- add 2 cups hot water (from tap)
- add 2 cups sugar, shake
- fill to just under the narrowing point with cold water, shake
- add about 2 or 3oz of warm water (110F) to a 2cup measuring cup or small bowl, add 2tsp sugar, stir.
- sprinkle 1.5tsp wine/champagne/brewers yeast on top of the water, do NOT disturb! Leave for 15 to 20min.
- stir resulting started yeast and add to 2L bottle, top-up bottle to about the point it starts to narrow
- drill hole in top of bottle to take one of the airline tube connectors (hard plastic thingies).
- push in the connector, and seal with glue-gun (glue-gun is faster and firmer then silicone)
- run airline tube from connector to diffuser in tank.
- mine lasts for 14 days
Note that use of wine or champagne yeast is important, don't try and get away with baker's yeast, it will die out to quickly. You can get wind yeast at your local wine-making store.
Dosing calculator? I am biased, I wrote one, its posted somewhere on the site, but here it is anyway:
www.cherniaksoftware.com/homepage/Data/NutriCalc.exe
its a simple windows install.
That calculator defaults to a 3x per week EI Dosing assuming a 50% weekly water change. 3x per week for macros and 3x (alternate days) for trace, with one "day of rest" -- the amounts shown in the right-most column are the amounts you dose each of those days.
