This is the 5 litre cylinder that I tried to refill. Stamped 3-96, I was told that it's "too old" and the LFS operator decline to accept the cylinder for refill.

Not wanting to waste the trip, I decided to bite the bullet and purchased another 5 litre cylinder. On the way back, I felt like a scuba diver who's too far from the sea...

New cylinder at left, stamped 04-2003. This should give me a good few years of service. I'll refill the old tank elsewhere and use it as a reserve.

urm... ya... I went shopping while at the LFS. Tropica's TMG 500ml, 2 sets of UGF, 2 glass ceramic disc diffusers and... a bag of otos!

I bought a 2-way CO2 splitter earlier on and decided to swap the connector on the regulator. Easier said than done, as it was VERY tight!!

A closer pic of the connector in question. I didn't opt for a pressure gauge regulator since it was intended to be 'on' 24/7.

With the connector carefully removed, I fixed some plumbers' tape to the splitter threads until......

The diameter and thread size of the splitter was bigger than the removed connector... (@%$%!%$)

Closer look at the culprit.. Doesn't these things have a industrial standard size??

Okay.... since there wasn't much I could do, I replaced the original connector, I can test run the new glass CO2 diffusers.  It has what appears to be a sintered ceramic disc.
 

I had thought the splitter wouldn't give me any problems and was gung ho to get 2 of these.

A closer look. Price wise, it was pretty good value.

The output was dosed at about 2 bubbles/sec. and it works great. Mist of bubbles are really quite fine.

As soon as the tiny bubbles leave the disc and the CO2 is released into the water, bubble size progressively reduces. Click on the image!

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