I have an ongoing need for CO2. My plan to get my fix is to mix baking soda with regular old kitchen 5% acid white vinegar. So far things are going well, but when my reaction vessel calms down there is still a good deal of white powder/mud left over. It is my understanding that this should not be the case, and that I should end up with just water with some acetate and sodium dissolved in it. So, I should have clear watery junk, not white muddy junk sitting at the bottom of clear watery junk.
Question the first: Am I wrong? If I am looking for the optimum mix, where “optimum” means the most complete consumption of reagents, should I or should I not have white muddy junk in my reaction vessel?
Question B: What IS the optimum ration of 5% acid white vinegar to baking soda? Using standard American kitchen measuring cups/tablespoons, etc. None of this metric “grams & mililitres” garbage.
My DIY CO2 formula involves mixing baking soda and citric acid and adding water*, which leaves a small amount of residue/sludge at the end of the reaction process.
*it’s to enhance aquarium plant growth. I see some people use baking soda and vinegar for CO2 generation for that purpose but never tried it.
If you didn’t know the right ratio, and it wasn’t something you could just look up (maybe you’re the first person to discover and experiment with some new substance, or maybe you just don’t know what the concentration is), what you’d do would be to gradually add more and more of one of the ingredients, keeping careful track of how much you’re adding, until it stops reacting when you add more. This process is called “titration”.
My mom’s community garden had a project to build an experimental greenhouse, to grow some vegetables year-round with no active energy input. The thermal aspects of the design worked just fine (even in the depths of a Cleveland winter, it never got below 55F), but the limiting factor turned out to be carbon dioxide. The irony was that the project was sponsored by a local small brewery (they wanted the fresh vegetables year-round for their associated restaurant), and if the greenhouse had been sited at the brewery, they could have easily supplied it with all the CO2 it needed.
Mrs FtG often needed small amounts of CO2 in her job. The standard way to get it was Alka-Seltzer and water. The bicarb+citric acid are already in the right ratio. If it’s good enough for top rated research labs, it should be good enough for the OP.
I am undone, you have seen though my ruse and know me for what I am: a nascent aquarist and a scoundrel. Naturally, this thread would have been more informative had I but stated my purpose plainly, but then I would never have conceived my latest plot to conquer Enceladus.
The sugar & yeast method. Surely this would, like, stink. Right?
When I realized I was having a problem I did get a couple cases of soda water. 1 can in the morning was enough to limp the fledgling 55gal ecosystem along until I could get to a more permanent fix.
Since starting this thread I abandoned the vinegar/soda scheme because it just required too much daily fiddling (shake the bottles & adjust the regulator a few times a day). Went with a purpose-built system that employs a 95g CO2 cartridge. Much better, but more expensive even just for the replacement bottles ($100 for 3 bottles that may last a week or two each). Smelling victory, I went nuclear last weekend and got a 10# bottle of CO2 and a regulator from a brewing supply business. About $300 out the door, and $35 to refill the tank every, like 4-6 months I expect. It all fits in the cabinet beneath the aquarium. But now my plants are going bananamas and I gotta get serious about cutting back the jungle.
