Cheap Way to make CO2 for your grow

erastus green · Feb 8, 2012

Great info, explained in a easy to follow way, my hat is off to anon, and also Tommy for the great photo. Just what I had been looking for, cheers, may your bongs bubble strong with potent smoke!

dvs1038 · Mar 27, 2012

I was just checking around regarding cheap ways to supply my plants with CO2 and I've been reading all these posts about creating ur own fermentation airlock and all this stuff and it sounds more like u guys wanna do some science experiments, but anyways for someone that just wants to get some CO2 to their plants the method that ppl I know have talked about and the one that seems cheapest and easiest to me is to go out to ur local supermarket or liquor store or whatever pick urself up some club soda aka seltzer water nuttin added to it, no sodium, no sugar, no flavoring of any kind just water and u guessed it CO2 that stuff that makes the bubbles, anyways u can simply put the soda in a spray bottle( u can even add some nutes if u do any kind of foliage spray) and spray it on ur plants now when u do this make sure not to have ur plants under any kind of light generating any kind of high heat cause like most know if u do this it will heat up the water on the leave and burn ur plants.

There is nuttin wrong with the fermentation method if there was so many ppl wouldn't be talkin bout it, but this seems more like a method a stoner would use!

Sorry one thing I left out here the CO2 is used by the plants while they r in the light cycle so if u just shutdown the lights while u spray them set up a fan to help em dry then turn on ur lights again after 15-20min NO more than 20min. That way the leaves should be pretty much dry,

2nd edit for noobs, I forgot to mention this as well but this method of spraying with club soda only can be used during veg stage, during flowering stage where u should avoid spraying the plant with water is when u would wanna break out the yeast and sugar method for CO2.

ruudong · Jun 9, 2012

needhelp said:
weedyoo.... what you made is what i explained... its called a CO2 generator.... but what i don't understand is why you're using a 5 gallon bucket when the CO2 generator says to use a 2 liter soda bottle.... and i'm not sure if you know why you need hose and a fish tank pump and the rock that makes bubbles?... its because a C02 generator is really for people who have plant aquariums... people that have fish and grow their plants under water.... since the plants are underwater they need a way to get CO2 to the plants.... so basically what i'm saying is your system might need tweaking.... because with 2 cups of water, 2 cups of sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of yeast in a 2 Liter soda bottle can give me 2 weeks of CO2... why are you only getting a week with a 5 pound bag of sugar, bucket and all that other stuff? oh yeah... its a bad idea to use glue for certain plastics because of a chemical they use that really won't let the glue get a good grip... so if a CO2 buildup occurs.. it will pop your hoses out.... truthfully i have a grow cab.. which makes it suitable for using a soda bottle... so i guess it depends on the size of your area

i use this all the time but i mix 1 1/2 cup brown suger 1/2 white suger 1 ts champaine yeast with 7 cups of luke warm water ,, mix them really good for about 5 minute then funnel it in to your 2 liter bottle

have a thick plastic pipe drill hole in top of the cap of a 2 liter coke bottle have the pipe just in the bottle a little bit , seall using bathroom based sealent i like to use silicone
have a second 1 liter bottle with the pipe connected from the 2 liter bottle , going all the way to the bottom of the 1 liter bottle with a second pice of tubing 1 inch in to the 1 liter bottle 20inch extra on it ,

fill the 1 liter bottle to the same height it would be filed to by soda pop ect this will act as a filter just to make sure only pure co2 comes out

personley i have the tubing taped right behind my fan so the fan dispurces the co2 to my plants

Scroga · Sep 19, 2012

what if I just poured a bottle or a half of seltzer around the base of my girl? (grown in hydroton) wouldn't this flush roots on the way past, then at the bottom of pot, sit and release the co2 back to the root zone?

outdoorking · Dec 8, 2012

So to give this a try I went ahead and used some old homebrew beer making experience and here is what I did. Took a black 5 gallon bucket with a sealing lid. Drilled a small hole in the top, same size as my water hoses on the hydro tank. This was so I could use the same fittings and hoses to make a tight seal. Bought some champaign (sp) yeast off ebay and filled the bucket half way with clean tap water. Warmed a gallon of water to 97 F and added 4 packs of yeast, stir and let sit for 30 minutes. Took 2 lbs of sugar (too much maybe?) and poured it into the 5 gallon bucket. Mixed until it all disolved. Added a half cup of protine shake mix powder. This is supposed to be a super food source for the yeast, not sure but worth a try. Poured the yeast mix into the main bucket and stired for a few minutes. Here was something I did second time around. Drilled a hole in my grow room wall and ran the hose into the room with the yeast bucket outside of the room. This was becasue first time I had bucket in the grow but noticed that since i keep it at 72 F around the clock it was a bit cold for the yeast. By having bucket ouside the natural heat kept it nice and warm. Other option would be to use a fishtank heater in the bucket. This would keep the temp set while the outside air could be cold. I then ran the end of the hose into a 2 liter bottle of water half full to make an airlock. That protects the yeast from getting contaminated with outside junk. Did it work? Oh yes. to be honest, I have to take some photos to show the proof. Had 4 short ryder that did great but the master piece was 2 blue mystic (all auto flower feminized from Nirvana) .... The blue mystics are about 5 feet tall, 3 feet thick, and each has 7 to 9 cola that are massive. I measured the largest cola, which is about 18 inches long but thicker than a half gallon milk jug and dense as can be. Maybe it is just the grow causing it to do so well but this is without a doubt the best grow yet and I did not change anything other than the addition of the ghetto co2 machine

Seems to work, I am stoaked. Give it a try. Tons of videos on youtube on this topic as well. Apparently there are devices like this for auqariums, to help the plants grow. Just much smaller in scale. I am considering next grow adding a difuser to the setup and running it directly into my plant hydro tubs. That way the bubbles will be in the acutal plant water and the difuser will ensure the co2 is in the water the plants use. Any extra will simply bubble up to the top and slowly creep out of the container directly into the base of the plant. Or at least this is what I am thinking. May try it on one tub to see if there is any difference noticable. Will report findings. Great thread! Thanks

outdoorking · Dec 8, 2012

I was not aware of this, I let mine run round the clock but have cage fans running that curculate and recylce the air. Have to come up with a way to time the release of gas I guess. Is it really bad to run 24 / 7 or just not optimal? I don't want to mess up such a great grow

joespit · Jan 23, 2013

I've got this setup going on. It's a 3 gallon brew jug dealie, filled with champagnes yeast and plenty of sugar. I wrapped a spare seedling heast mat around it to keep the yeast warm. But I guess I should pull it out of the tent at night?

A64 Team · Jan 24, 2013

Get that paintball gun out!. :hump:

no paintballs, just blast those maffackas with CO2! (joking)

Steelheader3430 · Jul 30, 2013

edensundies said:
Hi, just wanna know where you bought the release bulb on your fermentation setup, the one on top that looks like a plastic thingy( transparent)

If you still care you can get all the jugs, bungs, and bubblers from a store that sells beer brewing equipment.

Steelheader3430 · Jul 30, 2013

Has anybody on here just gotten a bottle of co2 and sprayed the plants with it periodically? I've seen it work wonders. Yes this was back in the dark ages (90's). How about getting a bottle of co2 and a valve for a beer keg then tuning it to get the appropriate amounts? Thats whats on my mind since I have access to that stuff.

midgetpawn · Oct 2, 2013

I'm curious what the amount of co2 in the average 2 liter soda bottle is. Has anyone tried opening a seltzer or soda bottle a tiny bit to let the co2 seep out for a while, and noticed raised co2 levels in the air?

GrowinDad · Oct 2, 2013

Here's what I don't get... Most of us have a tent in a larger room (or in a closet). We have intake and exhaust. I am really curious if anyone using the yeast method has measured the impact when there is exhaust. Seems like the co2 would be leaving too fast or moreso going in at too slow a rate to build up with exhaust???

matto70799 · Jun 17, 2015

Anonymous said:
Baking soda/acid is a good system, but it is ultimately fairly expensive. Furthermore, you also release acetate ions/salts, as well as other volatiles from the vinegar (which is not a pure solution of acetic acid, of course). They prolly won't kill your plants, though they might. Instead they will likely make it smell or taste bad.

What is a better way to get your carbon dioxide? Fermentation. Acquire some brewer's yeast if you can. The types of yeast you can use are in order of what is best, though all are acceptable:

Champagne
Wine
Ale
Beer
Baker's

Rig up a simple fermentation chamber with airlock. The airlock is designed to keep the atmosphere anaerobic while releasing your good CO2. Fermentation chamber should be any airtight container with top. It could be a 2 liter Coke bottle, for example. Drill a hole in its top and glue in some plastic tubing, making sure to create a good seal. An epoxy is prolly what you'll need to do it. Run that tube into a smaller, halved bottle: a water bottle works well. Place the tube at the exact bottom and glue it there such that the outlet of the tube faces the wall (not the bottom) and is not blocked (by glue, the wall, your mouse, whatever). Fill that up with water, about an inch and a half above the bottom.

The mechanism is all set up, now set up the fermentation. Fill the bottle with about a 20% solution of glucose (dextrose) by mass and place a few tsp. of yeast in that jaunt. Placing the yeast in some warm water for half an hour prior with some sugar is a good way to jump-start the process. Using those six-carboned sugars, you get optimum results, but other sugars can be used. In general, you'll likely find the 5-carbon variety (fructose: corn syrup, eg.) or the polysaccharide (sucrose: cane sugar). In these cases, its ok to add a little more sugar, no more than 25%. Champagne yeast can tolerate more. Brewers yeast, you may want to shoot for less. Cap that jaunt with the tubing/cap system you rigged up.

Here's the principal, its perty simple: The yeast use the sugar to make their energy (ATP). However, in absence of oxygen, the metabolic pathways can't be completed, and alcohol is excreted as waste. This is disadvantageous to the yeast, but hey, who cares? They also release carbon dioxide. For every equivalent of glucose or dextrose, the yeast produces two equivalents of carbon dioxide and alcohol. If other sugars are used, the process is slightly less efficient due to the early metabolics that get done to prepare it, or the inefficiency of metabolic/synthetic shunts (biochemical shite, its unimportant, but fun if you are nerdy). The carbon dioxide is good for your plants: its the objective. The alcohol is bad. It increases in concentration in the fermentation vessle and DOES NOT leave in any way. Over time, the yeast poisons itself with its own waste. Better yeasts (as per the above sheet) survive longer and make more carbon dioxide. Hence the reason for increasing the sugar, if you'd like (the difference is probably just about marginal if at all, so don't dwell on it).

So what does this mean for you? A mole of glucose is around 180 grams. Thus, a 20% mass solution will produce slightly more than TWO MOLES (2.2 to be be exact) of of gas per liter. At standard temperature and pressure, and if you are growing, that's what you want, you will get around 50 liters of pure carbon dioxide from this method, over the time period of about 2-4 weeks. Great stuff.

Problems: You can tell the yeast are dying when the bubbling through the airlock subsides. No way around it, you need to whip up another fermentation mixture. Optimally you would do this every week and a half, while the yeast are at their maximum productivity. Using cane sugar and baker's yeast this is a crazy inexpensive endeavour.

Can you kill the plants with too much CO2? Most likely not. They breathe it as air, and they really only need oxygen (the only other thing they really take from the air) to run their ETC and some other minor metabolic processes. They get this from the water, believe it or not. Also they respirate as much 02 as they take in CO2. No problem, really. Time when killing the plants from carbon dioxide have been reported is likely either in extreme cases (approaching NO oxygen in the air and thus water) or due to the poor downsides to using other carbon producing methods (acidic air, contamination of various sorts, etc.). On the other hand, your plants would optimally have about 3 times as much carbon dioxide as would be in the atmosphere. That rings in at around 6%, so not that much, and in all likelihood, its gonna be difficult to bring it up to these levels. Happy planting.

Just real quick: 100% correct. And to put to bed the idea that you can poison any plant with to much CO2 - no way it can be done. Look it up in the new edition of Ed Rosenthal's grow book. Here's the gist: the plants ability to use extra CO2 in the environment is limited by the amount of light and heat available. Ideally at about 400-600 ppm CO2 (with enough lights at about 75-80F) photosynthesis is very rapid at about 600 mol (4600 fc or 49,310 lux) which is not too hard to accomplish. Smaller, but significant, gains are seen to about 1200 ppm CO2 but you really need some heavy duty lights (Requiring about 5500 fc or 48,240 lux). Over this amount of CO2 you get smaller gains up to a max of 1500 ppm CO2 (but you need a whopping 7500 fc or 80,400 lux)!
Plants cannot be killed by too much CO2.
Anyway, hope all this helps!

matto70799 · Jun 17, 2015

matto70799 said:
Just real quick: 100% correct. And to put to bed the idea that you can poison any plant with to much CO2 - no way it can be done. Look it up in the new edition of Ed Rosenthal's grow book. Here's the gist: the plants ability to use extra CO2 in the environment is limited by the amount of light and heat available. Ideally at about 400-600 ppm CO2 (with enough lights at about 75-80F) photosynthesis is very rapid at about 600 mol (4600 fc or 49,310 lux) which is not too hard to accomplish. Smaller, but significant, gains are seen to about 1200 ppm CO2 but you really need some heavy duty lights (Requiring about 5500 fc or 48,240 lux). Over this amount of CO2 you get smaller gains up to a max of 1500 ppm CO2 (but you need a whopping 7500 fc or 80,400 lux)!
Plants cannot be killed by too much CO2.
Anyway, hope all this helps!

growdad: yes the CO2 is evacuated rapidly with exhaust fans. You get no benefit from augmenting CO2 at night (or during the dark cycle). What you can do is put your vent fan on a timer so it runs for like an hour every 2 hours or so and then constantly during the dark period. Ventilation (other than to remove heat from HID lights and the fans to simulate a breeze) is to pull out excess O2 and replenish the CO2 concentration naturally. If you are artificially generating CO2, and have a breeze inside your tent to keep the micro environment around the leaves and stems moving, ventilating with fresh air is not needed as often.

Just my 2 cents.

papabisquits · Jun 17, 2015

if your going to put a bottle with sugar water with yeast in your growroom just take up wine making they go hand in hand from conception till consumption.

JellyJaguar · Jun 17, 2015

rollitup said:
This is a low budget mod that can help you produce CO2 by simply using vinegar and baking soda. This method eliminates excess heat and water vapor production and requires simple items you can find in your closet Create s system that drips the vinegar into a bed of baking soda (place it in a bucket) The main con of this system is not being able to control the CO2 levels, It takes alot of time for the CO2 to build up to a level where it helps a plant. Once this level is reached going over this level can kill the poor little plants this will take some experimenting on your part to figure out how much to add, throwing a solenoid switch in the line with a timer will help you do this with little effort.

Good luck happy smoking

This is outstanding and the timing is impeccable, I was just walking down to my grow room this morning and thinking, man I wonder how much a co2 system would cost X) I will give this a shot for sure . I think I can picture in my head how to make a slow drip system using this method. Will upload my concept tonight and you guys can tell me what you think.

JellyJaguar · Jun 17, 2015

I think with a seven foot tall tent I would have to build a fairly hefty unit as well I wonder if it would be better for me just to buy a unit due to the size of my tent and wont the ventilation just remove it?

matto70799 · Jun 22, 2015

JellyJaguar said:
I think with a seven foot tall tent I would have to build a fairly hefty unit as well I wonder if it would be better for me just to buy a unit due to the size of my tent and wont the ventilation just remove it?

Hi. See my reply like 3 or 4 posts up about ventilation removing CO2. Short answer is yes ventilation will remove it. But I explained above that you can use the ventilation system on a timer and run it like 2 hours every 4 hours whIle the lights are on and all the time when they are off (plants only use CO2 during the light cycle reactions of photosynthesis, so not at all in the dark. Anyway, I think the best and most cost effective way of generating CO2 in the concentrations needed to make the biggest difference (in the long run, the setup is a bit pricey bit ongoing costs are fairly low) is to get a 40lb. (Or whatever size will fit your space, Ebay has them at good prices - about $100 for a big 20-40lb tank), a solenoid controlled regulator (Ebay for like $38.00), and a little high pressure plastic tubing (home depot - they sell black plastic 1/4" ID refrigerator water line. This stuff holds lots of pressure and works great for gases. Use it for N2 at work all the time. Cheap too ~$6.00 a roll of 10 or 20'). Remember tanks are usually sold empty so you have to account for the cost of the gas and getting it filled.
Ok good luck. Crank up the wattage on your lights, bring the CO2 levels to about 800-1200 ppm and watch your babies grow so fast you won't believe it. And we thought hydro alone was fast....

JellyJaguar · Jun 22, 2015

matto70799 said:
Hi. See my reply like 3 or 4 posts up about ventilation removing CO2. Short answer is yes ventilation will remove it. But I explained above that you can use the ventilation system on a timer and run it like 2 hours every 4 hours whIle the lights are on and all the time when they are off (plants only use CO2 during the light cycle reactions of photosynthesis, so not at all in the dark. Anyway, I think the best and most cost effective way of generating CO2 in the concentrations needed to make the biggest difference (in the long run, the setup is a bit pricey bit ongoing costs are fairly low) is to get a 40lb. (Or whatever size will fit your space, Ebay has them at good prices - about $100 for a big 20-40lb tank), a solenoid controlled regulator (Ebay for like $38.00), and a little high pressure plastic tubing (home depot - they sell black plastic 1/4" ID refrigerator water line. This stuff holds lots of pressure and works great for gases. Use it for N2 at work all the time. Cheap too ~$6.00 a roll of 10 or 20'). Remember tanks are usually sold empty so you have to account for the cost of the gas and getting it filled.
Ok good luck. Crank up the wattage on your lights, bring the CO2 levels to about 800-1200 ppm and watch your babies grow so fast you won't believe it. And we thought hydro alone was fast....

Wow good to know man thanks,

matto70799 · Jun 28, 2015

Super glad I could help. Just trying to pass on what little knowledge I have in return for the vast amounts I've taken from here. :hump:

Cheap Way to make CO2 for your grow

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