calinb

I'm using yeast CO2 injection. My quest for a longer-lived "load" took me to my local brewing supply store where the sales associate recommended Red Star "Premier Cuve'e active dry wine yeast (or Levur Oenologique Se'che et Active, if you're not a fish person )

He said it would have highest tolerance for ethanol build up. I pitched it to my 32 oz. water bottle CO2 generator at 100F to 105F, as recommended on the package, and found the yeast to not run quite as "hot" as my previous baking yeast. To compensate, I doubled the dose of the new Premier Cuve'e yeast to a full tsp. (pitched to 32 oz of water, 1 cup of white sugar, and 1/4 tsp. of baking soda to help with Portland, Oregon's KH=0 water).

The first thing I noticed was my ladder diffuser didn't clog up with yeast debris (or some other mystery debris) any more and I no longer needed to do daily cleanings to keep the bubbles from "derailing" or stalling in the viscous mystery goup.

I let the Cuve'e run for about week with no reduction in output, but I decided to refresh the batch, given that I'll be out of town for most of the week following Easter. When I opened the water bottle, I was not greeted with the usual sickeningly sweet "brewery blast" smell. Instead, the aroma was much more refinded...more...more, well, French or something! Having brewed many a bottle of beer in my youth, I decided to evaluate with a taste test. Wow--what a nice tasting Sake wine! I found it to be quite drinkable--and this was without any special hoity-toity Jananese rice, even. Maybe slightly light in the bitter after note department, but featuring a nice semi-sweet initial impression. Perhaps some aging would help.

I filtered the stuff through a paper coffee filter and put it in the fridge--this isn't your daddy's hot sake--after all, it's a fine cold a'-sake wanna-be like they server in the Narita airport!

Early this AM I can attest the stuff has some ethanol content too!

-Cal

susitna-flower

Thanks Cal- How is the cost vs. baking yeast?

Would you say the difference in debris is significant enough to outweigh the extra cost?

You are always the explorer! Searching where no one else dares to go.......

calinb

The yeast was less than a buck a pack, Sustina-flower. Thanks for the nice words. I'm using twice my baking yeast dose, but I think it's still pretty economical with a pack yielding close to two 32 oz. batches. I'll let it run down next time and report how long this yeast produces a strong CO2 output. Here's an update on my planted Mini-Bow 7 blackwater nano-biotype

The recipe of 1 tsp. yeast + 32 oz. water + 1 cup sugar + 1/4 tsp. baking soda is really ripping and the output is actually a little bit too strong for my comfort level. I might try 3/4 tsp. of yeast next time (and cut this batch with a little water). My Hydor submersible air pump powered diffuser is pumping up the blackwater up to a calculated 30 PPM CO2. (30 -35 ppm is as high as we should go with fish, I've read.) I may cut it back a little because there's quite a bit of uncertainty in the pH/KH/CO2 calculation, due to the limited precision of pH and KH readings. The calculated CO2 value will vary considerably with even with a small pH change (pH is a logarithmic scale) whereas it's linear with KH changes. I'm planning to buy a digital pH meter and that will help improve my confidence in calculated CO2 levels. I am running a modest air flow through an aeration stone too. It's tucked away under my HOB filter outflow and the chocolate gouramis don't seem to mind it. It generates a little surface turbulence--actually, providing faster CO2 loss! The CGs are pretty well protected from the currents by all the surface plants, but I don't really want to crank up the airstone and turbulence any higher to blow off extra CO2 and stay below 30 ppm.

Even though I've strayed a little from other CG Asian blackwater biotypes, I'm very happy with my setup. I have more plants than most similar projects and some would say the tank is overstocked; my final count is two CGs and five Hengel's rasboras. (I recently added two additional rasboras when I found the plants equilibrated the nitrates at a nice low 5 ppm.) The water quality is excellent for Asian blackwater fish at

pH=6.3
DKH=2
dGH=2
nitrate=5ppm

the fish remain healthy and the nitrates are now at an amazingly low equilibrium level.

The CO2 is helpful in driving the pH of lower (along with Indian almond leaves) but it's also a mission critical component. If the CO2 injection fails, the pH will climb. Everything else being equal, the higher the alkalinity of the water (KH buffering), the higher the pH will soar, if the CO2 fails. (What's the opposite of a pH "crash" -- a pH "blast?") In other words, if an aquarist sets up injection to realize high level of CO2 goal for plants (say 30+ ppm CO2) but then uses a buffer to keep the pH from dropping too much, the pH will blast upwards, if the CO2 injection stops. I've read that, at less than 1 dKH, pH becomes very unstable when injecting CO2 so we need some small level of buffering at the very least. 2dKH seems to be sufficient, in my experience, and the CGs are happy.

Even when I was using a Nutrafin ladder style diffuser and getting about 20 ppm CO2, the plants were going crazy in this tank. I've increased my water change interval to a fairly normal 25% every week. It's difficult to measure small nitrate changes, but the nitrates seem to reach an equlibrium of 5 ppm, due to the prolific plants, no doubt. The surface is about 45% riccia and 45% water sprite and I also have a few needle java ferns on some wood and my moss wall is growing out nicely.

I'm now running the ladder diffuser from a 2nd bottle of wine yeast and it's producing about 20 ppm CO2 in my 10 gal. I'll be setting up my 125 gal. in about a week. If I plant it, I'll think about graduating to a CO2 gas bottle and regulators.

-Cal

calinb

Here's an update on the wine yeast vs. baking yeast. The wine yeast seems to run a little stronger and it keeps it's "steam" going a little longer than the baking yeast. Still very little muck buidup on my CO2 diffuser ladder and I cleaned my Hydor diffuser for the 1st time. This is an improvement over baking yeast.

My 1qt water + 1 cup sugar + 1/4 tsp baking soda + 1 tsp wine yeast runs pretty well for 2 weeks. Another advantage of the wine yeast is it seems to repopulate better than baking yeast. To refresh the 34 oz water bottle generator, I drained off all but about 4 oz of the "fish face sake" and added 28 oz of water + 1 cup sugar + 1/4 tsp of yeast back into the bottle. It took off again without the addition of new yeast. I've not had good results doing the same with baking yeast. For me, reloading the generator when using baking yeast required new yeast too.

-Cal