There are a few ways to get CO2 for your aquarium. Some shops let you swap your empty cylinder for a filled cylinder, some refill your cylinder on the spot, and others help you send your cylinder to be refilled and let you collect it a few days later. Some hobbyists go to the gas suppliers directly for an on-the-spot or collect-later refill. Many of those who get their cylinder refilled wonder if they are getting back a full cylinder. This article will teach you how to tell.
If you doing a one-for-one swap, this doesn’t apply as the empty weight of each cylinder may vary. For swaps, you have to trust that the shop sent it to a professional gas supplier which should do a proper refill.
Capacity of the cylinder
First, you need to know the capacity of the cylinder. Some parts of the world use volume to indicate the capacity of CO2 cylinders. The rest use weight to indicate the capacity of CO2 cylinders. For example, in the USA, they use pounds (lbs or #) for the weight of the compressed CO2 inside the cylinder when full (not the total weight of the CO2 and cylinder). In Singapore, we use litres (L) for the volume of compressed CO2 that the cylinder can hold.
Commonly found cylinder capacities in Singapore are: 1L, 2L, 3L and 5L
A 1L cylinder just means that it can hold 1L of compressed CO2.
There are bigger cylinders, but for most hobbyists, 5L or smaller are the most practical sizes for space and transportation reasons. The bigger cylinders available to hobbyists are 10L cylinders. Sometimes you might be able to find 13.5L (20lb) cylinders. These sizes are mainly used by hobbyists who have much larger aquariums, like 600L (6x2x2 feet) ones.
Weight of CO2
In a fully filled CO2 cylinder, the compressed CO2 should weigh approximately 0.66kg/L. That means a litre of compressed CO2 should weigh about 0.66kg.
Theoretically, if your 1L cylinder weighs 1kg when empty, then when it is full, it should weigh 1.66kg.
However, in Singapore and many other parts of the world, gas suppliers will only fill 0.6kg of CO2 per litre of capacity. This is an industry-wide safety buffer; they are not attempting to cheat you. So if your cylinder capacity is 1L and weighs 1kg when empty, they will fill your cylinder until it weighs 1.6kg. That is, they will only fill 0.6kg of CO2.
Basically, take the capacity of your cylinder in litres and multiply it by 0.6kg.
| Cylinder Capacity (L) | Approximate Weight of CO2 (kg) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.6 |
| 2 | 1.2 |
| 3 | 1.8 |
| 5 | 3 |
Am I getting a full cylinder back?
To find out if you are getting a full cylinder back, just find out the weight of your empty cylinder once. Thereafter, weigh it every time you get it back from refilling to check if it is full.
Before weighing the empty cylinder, you should make sure it is completely empty. Very often we will detach the cylinder as soon as the gauge shows a very low or zero psi. However, it doesn’t mean it is completely empty. The gauges are not accurate and there could still be some pressurised CO2 inside. If you weigh it now, it may not be the empty weight yet. Depending on the size of your cylinder, what’s left inside may be negligible or significant enough to make a difference in the weight. For example, from my 13.5L cylinder with a dual-stage regulator, I can get at least 1 day’s worth of CO2 after the gauge reads zero.
If you would really like to know the weight of a really empty cylinder, you can detach the CO2 tubing from your bubble counter, and then let the CO2 flow for a few hours or even overnight. You are basically waiting for your bubble counter to stop bubbling.
You should make sure it is a well-ventilated area. Although they shouldn’t be much CO2 left in the cylinder, still better to be safe.
Warning: You might be tempted to detach your regulator and then open the cylinder main valve to let the gas escape. I strongly discourage that. The hissing is sudden, deafeningly loud and could scare your household members and neighbours. Might get you an earful from your family members too, if you can still hear after that…
Once you have emptied the cylinder, weigh it and record the weight somewhere. Now, whenever you send your cylinder for a refill, weigh it when it comes back to check if it increased by the correct weight. Then you will know if you got a full refill. Do be aware it may vary slightly from the expected weight, but it should not be too far away.
So, if you send a 5L cylinder for refilling, your cylinder should be about 3kg heavier when it comes back.
Why can’t I just depend on the gauges?
The gauges measure pressure, not volume. And there is no way to co-relate the pressure reading to the amount of gas in the cylinder. This is why the gauges can’t tell you how much CO2 is really in your cylinder. However, when the cylinder is near empty, the pressure will start to drop and you will start to see the gauge readings drop as well.
Nevertheless, the gauge readings can tell you something about the contents and state of your cylinder.
| Pressure Reading (psi) | What it Means |
|---|---|
| 1000 (sometimes 900+ due to inaccurate gauges) | There is some liquid CO2 in your cylinder. Ranges from full to almost empty full. |
| Between 1000 to 0 | No more liquid CO2 in the cylinder; just pressurised CO2 gas. The cylinder will be empty soon. Depending on the capacity and the usage rate, it could be days or weeks. For the same usage rate, larger cylinders last longer at this stage. Obviously, a higher usage rate will mean the cylinder will be empty sooner. At this stage, you should be checking the gauges and injection rate (or CO2 levels) daily. Single-stage regulators will begin to slow down and may cause a dangerous End-of-Tank-Dump (Google it) in some situations, |
| 0 | No more CO2 will be coming out of your cylinder or at least too slow for your tank requirements. If you are using a dual-stage regulator, you might get a bit more CO2 quite close to your required injection rate. But essentially time to swap in a full cylinder. |
Bonus: Industrial refilling process
The following describes the typical refilling process if you bring your cylinder to a gas supplier. These are the steps they will take to refill your cylinder, just to give you an idea of how it is done, when done properly. Some of the fish shops that do on-the-spot refills may not follow the steps described below exactly, but the important thing is that they give you back a cylinder at the correct weight or close to it.
All the steps below are performed by the gas supplier employee. Please do not attempt this yourself.
- Open the main valve on your cylinder and let any remaining compressed CO2 escape.
- Attach the refilling hose. The other end of the hose is attached to a compressor which is connected to a much bigger cylinder of CO2. The hose has a closed valve and CO2 will not flow yet.
- Place your cylinder on a weighing scale and tare the weighing scale. This means they set the weight reading of the scale to zero even though your cylinder is sitting on it. This allows them to weigh how much gas is being filled into your cylinder.
- Open the valve on the refilling hose and turn on the compressor. CO2 gas will start to flow from the big cylinder into your cylinder. The compressor makes the process faster and also helps to fill your cylinder to the proper pressure/capacity.
- They will watch the weighing scale and stop the refill once it reaches the correct weight. For example, if your cylinder has a capacity of 5L, they will stop refilling when the weight reaches 3kg. Typically it will overshoot by a few hundred grams by the time they close the valve. So sometimes you might get the “full” weight.
- The last steps are to switch off the compressor, close the valves, detach the hose, etc.