red9_14_82

just wondering how many people thought that i would need co2 in my newly set-up 10 gallon i have 10 neons but thought maybe if i get alot more little fish that they might make enough co2! i have flourish fertilizer and a flora glo bulb

trenac

C02 injection is always good. I personally would never run a tank again without C02, even if it's low light. You could use a 20oz pop bottle for DIY or go with one of those small pre-made systems.

tjc

I was just reading an article earlier today that said it's really hard to add enough fish to a planted tank that can supply enought CO2 for a low light aquarium.

I am not a do-it-yourself person. Psychologically, I feel I can't achieve anything DIY. Well, I ran two, 2 litre bottles of a yeast/sugar mix on a 65 gallon set-up and it worked quite well. You could see the plants pearling. It should be easier to achieve this in a 10 gallon aquarium.

Today I plan to hook-up a DIY CO2 for my 6.6 gallon shrimp tank. I'll use a two litre soda bottle with a hole made in the cap to fit the air tubing. I'll heat up a roofing nail on the stove holding the nail with plyers and puncture the middle of the soda bottle cap. I'll insert rigid tubing in the cap at a length of about 2 inches. I'll use aquarium sealent around the tubing where it meets the cap and let it dry for a day.

I use a mixture of 2 cups of sugar and 1 teaspoon of yeast for the reciepe. Use luke warm water to disolve the sugar and yeast. Fill the bottle up to about 3/4 full. The action of the yeast will cause foaming at the top and you want to make sure that the foam doesn't reach the air tubing and get siphoned into the aquarium. Connect a check valve to the tubing going into the tank to prevent water being siphoned back from the aquarium. You need to use some type of CO2 diffusion to get the CO2 disovled in the water.

Read up on DIY CO2 and don't be reluctant to do it.

BTW, there is never any reason to cap the bottle to wait for pressure to build up in the bottle. Some people thought that such a method is a good idea until the bottle exploded and took off like a missle creating a terrible and dangerous mess. It's not necessary, and not logical to do such a thing.