Rocco Moretti wrote in
:

Thanks for the quick reply.

Another thing that you may want to consider is what "rated to last a
month" means. When I was negligent about running a DIY CO2, I'd still
be getting bubbles one month after last fillup, but the bubble rate
was 1 every minute or so, versus one every 5 seconds or less with a
fresh bottle.

I'm sure you could set up a DIY system of the same quality as the Red
Sea one, but it may take some experimenting.

Even with the Red Sea brand name media I do notice that plant growth seems
to peek at about three to four days after refreshing the reactor, and then
has dropped off considerably by the two week mark. It sounds like one of
the easiest ways to cheaply DIY is to just use a simple sugar and yeast mix
and refresh the reactor every other week or so.

Using gelatin in the reactor sounds like it would be a pain in the ass to
clean.