Creating CO2

This is my latest aquarium project.

It's called a carbon dioxide (CO2) reactor. It's a device used to dissolve CO2 into the water. It's hooked up to a 1.5 juice bottle filled with yeast, sugar and water. All that's needed to generate the CO2.

Plants need light and CO2 in order to thrive, and you want a lush healthy planted aquarium you need both in large quantities. Approximately 5 watts of light per gallon. And about 20-30 ppm of CO2.

CO2 ussed by plants for creation of organic compounds, this process is commonly known as photosynthesis. Although fish exhale CO2 through respiration it's hardly enough to make any impact, in fact it only contributes to about 1ppm.

The powerhead is used for agitation and thus dissolve the CO2 bubbles into the water while inside the plastic tube, but I found this wasn't happening too efficiently because the bubbles were actually large enough to float to the top of the water and escape. So I added a recirculation tube that keeps the CO2 moving in and around at high speeds and chopped up into little tiny misting bubbles (see the video). After about a week there are pretty significant results.

Here's a video of it. I actually shot it in high-definition 1080p but my darn version of iMovie is old and wont export in HD. I'll update it to HD after I upgrade.