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RE: [APD] Re: CO2 for multiple tanks




Oh believe me, my wife would notice it!

Laith
[snip]
I am running 6 aquariums off one 20lb CO2 tank, 6 needle valves for
each tank, using Dave's system.  Most people don't even seem to notice
the green tubing snaking around the room unless I point it out to them.

Diane Brown in St. Louis

Just thinking about this, it would be possible to run the lines in the walls/floor/basement if you had to. The HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) people still maintain a lot of the old air-logic control systems in commercial buildings. The systems were kinda neat, using pressurized air to run big hot water and steam control valves from pneumatic thermostats (and it gets *far* more complex than this in the larger systems). Anytime you're in a building with a hissing thermostat this is what you're hearing.


Anyway.... The interesting part for aquarium people is that a lot of these air logic systems used 1/4" tubing which will fit a lot of the better needle valves if you use the threaded fittings. As a result, there are a lot of parts that can work for the larger CO2 systems. You can get nylon tubing from plastics supply houses for reasonable prices, or even the cheaper polypropylene stuff, and run that in the walls where it will hold up better than the silicone airline tubing over time. Also, you can get small copper tubing with "T" fittings to build little manifolds (they need soldering though -- just like water-pipe plumbing but with tiny parts).

If anyone has a big, distributed CO2 system with one CO2 cylinder and a bunch of tanks, using the air logic tubing and fittings would let you run the supply lines in walls and floors like electrical wiring and get it out of sight, and all the necessary fittings are readily available and inexpensive.

Just a thought...

-Bill



*****************************
Waveform Technology
UNIX Systems Administrator

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