Hi John,I think you'll need to have three needle valves for this to work. You cannot split the line downstream of the needle valve to two separate reactors, unless each has significant back-pressure (such as a glass diffusor). What generally happens is that one of the tanks gets all the bubbles, and the second at best gets none, and at worst, acts as a siphon from the first tank.
I run five tanks off the same CO2 regulator, but I recently purchased a hexo-manifold (see attached photo) for about the same price as a single ideal valve. It does a decent enough job so far and it's stylish chrome matches the overkill regulator I bought at the same time.
In terms of tubing, straight vinyl airline should do the trick just fine. I use black vinyl from Home Depot (for drip irrigation lines). It's the same size as airline.
Do not use silicone tubing.I'm one of those folks that don't use solenoids & never have -- I received one recently & considered trying it, but am concerned about the effect of shutting one off upstream of the needle valves on very long runs to multiple tanks. I may try it on a different regulator that only has a single output.
I really like the aluminum tanks. They weigh significantly less than the steel, and have a nice handle. Get a 20# if you can afford it -- swap-out cost is almost the same at Central, but it'll last longer (especially feeding three aquariums!).
Hope this helps! - Erik On Sat, 17 Oct 2009, J Clouse wrote:
I've been running three DIY CO2 setups for some time, and now I'm ready to step up to a pressurized system. My research to date has me leaning towards the following, but I wanted to check with the group before I make any investments. <http://sumoregulator.com/PremierLine.html>10 lb aluminum tank (Central Welding?) Sumo regulator <http://sumoregulator.com/PremierLine.html> (2) Ideal 52-1-12 metering valves (2) JBJ bubble counter (2) Red Sea CO2 500 reactor Flexible CO2 tubing (though I'm tempted to use something cheaper...) In looking at the options, it seems like running 24/7 without a solenoid and possibly running an airstone at night seems to be the simplest setup with the least risk to pH (just uses up more CO2). I would like to use this setup to run *three* tanks. Two tanks in the basement using the Red Sea reactors (running off of a the output of one of the metering valves. The third tank is on the floor directly above the basement setup. I would like to run the output of the second metering valve into a venturi on the intake of a Magnum 350 (currently doing this with (2) DIY bottles). Any mistakes you can help avoid? Any recommendations for a simpler setup? Cheers, John
-- Erik Olson Sent from my crusty old Linux box erik at thekrib dot com
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