I frequent the salty-side forums and ran across something I hadn't seen or thought about before. Apparently, it has been available for some time in mission critical setups like labs and beer-making. It's a CO2 tank auto-switcher.
As you can see from the picture, It's DIY. The issue the reefers have is that they depend on CO2 for their calcium reactors which maintain alkalinity. Especially with SPS corals and thousands and thousands of dollars invested in their tanks, they cannot risk running out of CO2 or having the dreaded CO2 dump at the end. Therefore, something that automatically switches to a new CO2 makes a lot of sense.
This one is cool because the guy included pressure-sensing meters that sound an alarm when the pressure gets below a set number. Then it automatically switches tanks.
For me, and probably most of you, CO2 is not mission critical for the most part. I'm sure I'm not the only one that got lazy and/or busy and the next thing you know, you've been without CO2 for a week. However, we can come back from that, no problem. So, this item may be more of a gear-head or DIY junkie thing, but man it's cool.
I would love to have the ability to refill a tank at my leisure as opposed to scheduling when it happens. Of course, you could simply have a second CO2 on hand and swap it manually, but hey, what fun is that?
This is probably more applicable for those of us with 5 lb tanks that need to be swapped more often. But, maybe not. A 20 lb tank is a pain to take for refills or a swap.
What do you think?
As you can see from the picture, It's DIY. The issue the reefers have is that they depend on CO2 for their calcium reactors which maintain alkalinity. Especially with SPS corals and thousands and thousands of dollars invested in their tanks, they cannot risk running out of CO2 or having the dreaded CO2 dump at the end. Therefore, something that automatically switches to a new CO2 makes a lot of sense.This one is cool because the guy included pressure-sensing meters that sound an alarm when the pressure gets below a set number. Then it automatically switches tanks.
For me, and probably most of you, CO2 is not mission critical for the most part. I'm sure I'm not the only one that got lazy and/or busy and the next thing you know, you've been without CO2 for a week. However, we can come back from that, no problem. So, this item may be more of a gear-head or DIY junkie thing, but man it's cool.
I would love to have the ability to refill a tank at my leisure as opposed to scheduling when it happens. Of course, you could simply have a second CO2 on hand and swap it manually, but hey, what fun is that?
This is probably more applicable for those of us with 5 lb tanks that need to be swapped more often. But, maybe not. A 20 lb tank is a pain to take for refills or a swap.
What do you think?
