"spiral_72" wrote in news:1106256969.936458.265300
@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Alright, I've got this idea. Boy, that sounds like the beginning to an
end.

I figure I can drop dry ice in a tank, cap it with a regulator and have
CO2 for some period of time for my planted aquarium. Obviously it will
require more than a handful of dry ice and chances are it ain't quite
that simple. Right now I am building a tank with a mouth wide enough to
accept an entire piece. I figger I'll pack the stuff in there like the
old shotgun wadding with a length of 2x2 or something until it's full,
and cap it.

I run a search on this over the web and the Google groups. I got the
same response: "DON'T DO IT, IT'S TOO COMPLICATED"

What's up with dat? Any particular reason? I don't want to hear that
the stuff is not sanitary either. The air in my house probly ain't
sanitary after a nice homemade bowl of chille. Heck, it's free......
They pack ice cream in it at the gas station (they sell ice cream in
cones) and they just throw it away.



Actually sounds like fun but a few of the things I can think of off hand.

1. I'm not sure if you'll get enough pressure to run a regulator. I've
heard many horror stories of regulators allowing CO2 dumps into tanks
because they let their CO2 tank get too low and thus not enough pressure
for the regulator to work with, the remaining CO2 gets injected overnight
and game over.

2. If you do get enough pressure for a regulator, how good are you at
building high pressure tanks? I don't think you want any sort of explosion
near a large glass tank filled with water.

3. If you rely on the speed of it melting to dictate the injection rate
(maybe a setup with a insulated box for the ice and an air tube to the
intake of a canister filter) then it's an issue of controling the speed.
You could change that with using more or less insulation and I could see
that maybe working.. no worse that yeast and sugar for varing rates.

P.