Godzilla68

Just a quick follow up. Customer service responded within hours of my contact request- On Thanksgiving day none the less! After a quick back and forth, I couldn't resolve the problem, so Candi had a replacement sent first thing Friday morning. I received it this morning and installed it and it is working fine! Just got a DOA unit to start with, I guess. Thanks to the Co-op crew for the rapid and easy replacement!

I just got my Regulator and set it up a couple of days ago. When I first set it up, I had to crank it way down to get any pressure on the second stage meter. I had to wait a couple of days for my diffusers to get here, and when I went back to set them up, there was no pressure in the second stage gauge. I removed the regulator from the tank, played with the second stage valve (removed the cover, looked at the spring and valve mechanism and re-installed it....and I could get pressure again after re-attaching it to the co2 tank, but this morning, there is no pressure on the second stage gauge and I'm getting frustrated. Is there a "user serviceable" component that I can fix here, or should I just get ready to send it back for replacement?

Hi Billygoat. All the videos and descriptions that I could find including the one linked from Aquarium Co-op's sale page show a circular "loop" with a "T" at the pump. I couldn't find anything that suggested that my double blind end "string" would actually work, but I couldn't think of a reason that it would fail, so I tried it. I just wanted to post this here so that others might be encouraged to break the "party line". :) G

Brief video showing the air line around the room

All of the discussions and instructions about installing a linear piston air pump suggest that it is necessary to make the air line into a "loop" with 3/4 to 1" pvc and to avoid "dead end" connections. Being a bit contrarian and willing to make a mistake, I tried installing mine with segments of 3/4" pvc containing the valves connected by flexible 3/4" ID vinyl tubing. Two of my manifold pipes end in "dead ends" and there is no loop. FYI, it works just fine for me, but I have only a few sponge filters and other air accessories running off of it. Perhaps my success is due to the relatively low load on the system. The advantage of this installation is that it is much easier to connect the manifold segments with flexible tubing than it would be to make rigid pvc connections around the room. Second, having "dead end" manifolds reduces the length of tubing needed by at least 1/2. Third, even with just a few tanks running, the cost of this system is little more than individual air pumps for each tank/device; the convenience is HUGE and the noise is almost non-existent. I would post a video showing my installation, but my video is mp4 and that format isn't accepted by the forum tab here.

Hello, I'm getting back into freshwater aquariums after many years off. Looking into setting up a fish room with a linear air pump from you'all. The instructions and all the videos that I can find indicate that a "loop" output is needed. I can't figure out why a linear run from the pump to an end cap would be significantly inferior to a "loop". Can someone explain the fluid dynamics simply? Obviously with a loop, the pressure is equalized from both ends of the loop and the pressure will drop slightly to the center of the loop; while in a linear run, the pressure will be slightly higher at the origin than at the terminal end- Since I'm not going to be using near the capacity of the pump, I'm not sure that the additional pvc/installation is worth the benefit. Thanks in advance. G