# Did I just gas a fish?



## Desertsp (Apr 27, 2013)

I think I just gassed a fish  

I'm trying different methods of dissolving my DIY co2 supply into the water, and yesterday I decided to try feeding the airline directly into the intake on my canister. This is a lot quieter than the Cerges reactor I built last week, but I figured it would be less efficient for some reason. 

Anyways, I was messing with the 2 liter yeast bottle an hour ago and the agitation caused a big release of bubbles into the canister filter. Probably 30 bubbles rushed in, as opposed to the normal rate of about 0.5 bps. They must have gotten trapped in the media since I never heard the pfft noise of bubbles on the impeller. Within a half hour I noticed the guppies staying near the surface, and one of the two otos basically just floating aimlessly in the current. Five minutes later the oto was dead. Right away I did a water change and the guppies are now back to normal...but I'm pretty sure I killed one of my fish 

Now my question is, does co2 really dissolve that fast? Is this why people use regulated co2, not because DIY can't produce enough but because it's too unpredictable? 

Thanks in advance for any input!


----------



## Dans85 (May 1, 2013)

WOW!!! I've never heard of that.... What size tank do you have? I have heard of people having their fish gasp at the surface for air because of high concentrations of CO2, but I've never heard of a fish dying that fast because of it......


----------



## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

People use regulated CO2 because it is cheaper in the long run, less maintenance, more dependable and clean.

I think what probably happened is some of the sugar and yeast burped into your filter and caused the issue. The stuff in the bottle is really quite bad for fish.

30 bubbles definitely is not enough to kill fish like that. More like 1000s of bubbles for a few hours.


----------



## Desertsp (Apr 27, 2013)

Thanks for the responses. So it sounds like it could have just been a coincidence I guess. I am sure none of the yeast got ino the tank since the bottle is only half full and the gas goes through a separator anyways. 

Tank is 25 gallons. I thought it should be safe to use one or more 2L yeast bottles with this tank, right? 

I'll have two drop checkers in a few days to finally get a rel reading. The plan is to use both of them with different strength KH solutions, and get a CO2 reading accurate within +/- 5ppm. At least that's the goal...I am doing this chemistry with kitchen measuring equipment! Once I have that going I'll repeat the incident while keeping a very close eye on the fish and drop checker.


----------

