Lord Nibbler

I have one of the Tetramin CO2 feeds for one of my aquariums. They sell their "activator" yeast in tandem with a "stabilizer." Usually this gives me a nice steady stream for about a month.

I decided to try just some activated yeast instead of buying more of their product. It gave a crazy stream (like an opened soda) for a week then died out. So what is their "stabilizer" made of that keeps the yeast colony from spiking so badly?

czado

Hagen/Nutrafin's "stabilizer" is baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), and Tetra's probably is too.

How much yeast did you start with? About how large is the Tetramin
container?

If you usually get a good month's output, it is likely Tetra uses a more alcohol-resistant strain of yeast (Hagen/Nutrafin does).

As a suggestion, with DIY the strain of yeast and such is not so important if you make regular mixes. A popular method is to stagger two bottles joined with a T to one diffusor. If you start each bottle a week apart, use a standard mix (many recipes on APC's archives), and change the mix on an alternating bottle weekly, you can work around the limitations of yeast and instead focus on higher and more stable CO2. This method works well for those of us who don't mind making quick and easy mixes on the regular.

There are also recipies for longer lasting, more complicated mixes in APC's archives/search.

Hope this helps.

Lord Nibbler

The container I'd say is about a liter and a half. The yeast comes in a packet, I'd say about a third to a half of a teaspoon.

czado

With a cup and a half of sugar and 1/8-1/4tsp regular yeast, you should get at least two weeks output. Such a standard mix has been known to run for three or more weeks, but the idea of staggering bottles is to always have a bottle outputting near max rate.

Adding the same amount of baking soda probably would not hurt, but I think the problem before was too much yeast. Those little yeast packages are pretty big once you measure it out.