This is a long shot but has anyone used brewing yeast to produce Co2 for live plants in an aquarium? It's pretty common in the hobby but I figured as a home brewer, why not use leftover brewing yeast? I need a strain that's slow but sure at warmer room temperatures. I know normally warmer ferments go fast, any ideas on how to slow it down?
Fish tank ferment!
- Thread starter Demus
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FordForever
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I have never tried this but it sounds like it may work. For anyone not familiar, in heavily planted fish tanks hobbyist use a DIY CO2 generator by forcing the air that goes through the airlock directly into the tank through a diffuser (to dissolve the CO2 into the aquarium water). The plants need the CO2 injected in the water to thrive.
This is a topic i've been wanting to stumble upon for awhile. I have a planted aquarium of my own and i've used those co2 tanks but settled for my own DIY system with distillers yeast and a large gatorade bottle. but it seems to only last a couple weeks at the most. would be interesting if someone has incorporated both of these great hobbies into one system of aquatic plant growing/brewing harmony.
dinnerstick
Well-Known Member
just feed it a little bit of sugar every day?
dgr
Well-Known Member
Why can't you just turn off the lights?
Demus,
You should pop over to the making traditional rice wine thread and give it a read. It uses mold to convert starch to sugar and yeast to convert that to alcohol and CO2. I don't actually use an airlock so I don't know how long or the volume of CO2 produced but it ferments for weeks as opposed to days. It would be a really cheap experiment and worse comes to worse you'd have some tasty rice wine to drink while pondering your next move.
Demus,
You should pop over to the making traditional rice wine thread and give it a read. It uses mold to convert starch to sugar and yeast to convert that to alcohol and CO2. I don't actually use an airlock so I don't know how long or the volume of CO2 produced but it ferments for weeks as opposed to days. It would be a really cheap experiment and worse comes to worse you'd have some tasty rice wine to drink while pondering your next move.
doghousechef
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From what I've read, you can use any kind of yeast. The mold is what makes this happen. The special mold slowly converts the rice to sugar and the yeast convert to alcohol as it's happening.
Brew more and use an aquarium chiller to keep the fermenter cooler change out fermenters every 2 weeks. Damn, the things I would go through to help out my plants.
dgr
Well-Known Member
Read the thread Well just parts of it. jak1010 on here sells what you need on ebay for very reasonable prices if you can't get it locally. I don't know if you can use any old yeast as it is rocket fuel. You do need the molds to get the starch converted to sugar but the molds and yeast all come prepackaged for much less than brewers yeast.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f243/making-traditional-rice-wine-cheap-fun-different-361095/
Well just parts of it. jak1010 on here sells what you need on ebay for very reasonable prices if you can't get it locally. I don't know if you can use any old yeast as it is rocket fuel. You do need the molds to get the starch converted to sugar but the molds and yeast all come prepackaged for much less than brewers yeast.https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f243/making-traditional-rice-wine-cheap-fun-different-361095/
Seems like a lot of trouble when co2 is about a buck a pound. I mean, it's kind of neat to collect what CO2 you can from a fermentation meant for consuming, but if my understanding is correct, it takes about 11 pounds of sugar to make 5 pounds of CO2. Now, if you do something with that fermented sugar (don't talk about it), then the overall economics are pretty sound.
How about letting the ferment fill up a really big mylar bag in a closet and then when you're ready to meter it into the fish tank through a stone, put a small weight on top of the balloon to apply pressure? Eh, pretty goofy but it would work.
How about letting the ferment fill up a really big mylar bag in a closet and then when you're ready to meter it into the fish tank through a stone, put a small weight on top of the balloon to apply pressure? Eh, pretty goofy but it would work.
dgr
Well-Known Member
True that Bobby. Medical MJ has caused a proliferation of pretty cool equipment which includes CO2 dispensing systems for injecting a specific amount of co2. $200 will get a recycle timer and a co2 regulator with a valve. Hook that to a diffuser and a co2 tank and you would have a set and forget solution. But yeast is more fun.
A lot of DIY planted tank people use a cup of sugar a bit of baking soda and bakers yeast in a one liter bottle about half full of warm water. Put in some air line, a check valve, and a diffuser in the tank. Shake it up every two or three days tell it stops working then refill it.
aiptasia
Well-Known Member
The mold is usually an Aspergillus or Rhyzopus strain that can be found in dried yeast balls from China and Vietnam. Koji rice can also be found in some health food stores and Japanese markets for making miso and sake with. These break down long chain starches into yeast digestable glucose and it does take about three weeks to completely ferment out around three cups of cooked rice using both the mold and the yeast in conjunction fermenting at the same time. You would probably want to use a cheap one gallon pickle jar, drill out the lid to fit some snug fitting aquarium tubing (self grommeting) and then run that aquarium tubing to a bell diffuser in your aquarium.
Now, here's something you haven't considered. With no light, your plants won't photosynthesize, which means they won't be scavenging and consuming CO2 out of saturation in the aquarium water. A super saturation of CO2 is going to crash the pH in your freshwater within a few hours of the lights going out. This is a problem in that a rapid pH swing like that is highly stressful to your fish, and will kill them. Using CO2 as an acidifier in water is very common in reef aquaria when using a calcium reactor.
How I got around the problem is to hook a very small powerhead with a venturi valve on it up to an appliance timer. Something very low flow, say 5 gph. You run the CO2 aquarium tubing to the venturi stem at the top of the powerhead pump and plug it in with the lights into the appliance timer. This setup turns the CO2 on when the lights are on, and off when the lights go off. This prevents the CO2 swings and crashes.
Now, here's something you haven't considered. With no light, your plants won't photosynthesize, which means they won't be scavenging and consuming CO2 out of saturation in the aquarium water. A super saturation of CO2 is going to crash the pH in your freshwater within a few hours of the lights going out. This is a problem in that a rapid pH swing like that is highly stressful to your fish, and will kill them. Using CO2 as an acidifier in water is very common in reef aquaria when using a calcium reactor.
How I got around the problem is to hook a very small powerhead with a venturi valve on it up to an appliance timer. Something very low flow, say 5 gph. You run the CO2 aquarium tubing to the venturi stem at the top of the powerhead pump and plug it in with the lights into the appliance timer. This setup turns the CO2 on when the lights are on, and off when the lights go off. This prevents the CO2 swings and crashes.
Yep. I once considered using yeast to generate CO2 for exactly this purpose (calc reactor). I dose 2-part now. Funny to see these things on our beer forum.
OTOH, I've posted about homebrewing on my reef forum, so quid pro quo.
Miss my reef tank but having the birds makes up for it and we lose power way to often to many losses from multiple electrical power outs.
dgr
Well-Known Member
You mean to a recycle timer and a CO2 regulator with a valve?
Here's one
http://stores.ebay.com/The-Hydropon...658937014&_sid=53124404&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322
Look at the Art DNe recycle timer. Note it has day/night/both settings on it which should allow you to only inject CO2 when your plants want it. It is a timer that you set the on time and the restart time. Say 5 seconds every hour. Then it turns on for the set amount of time, waits the restart time and cycles again.
An example of a solenoid regulator would be this sentinel
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sentinel-Co...206?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c1fcbe816
I don't know how much CO2 you need. You can get the regulators to regulate down to .2 SCF/hour so with a recycle timer you can really inject small amounts.
Here's one
http://stores.ebay.com/The-Hydropon...658937014&_sid=53124404&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322
Look at the Art DNe recycle timer. Note it has day/night/both settings on it which should allow you to only inject CO2 when your plants want it. It is a timer that you set the on time and the restart time. Say 5 seconds every hour. Then it turns on for the set amount of time, waits the restart time and cycles again.
An example of a solenoid regulator would be this sentinel
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sentinel-Co...206?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c1fcbe816
I don't know how much CO2 you need. You can get the regulators to regulate down to .2 SCF/hour so with a recycle timer you can really inject small amounts.
