Why is my Cornelius reg leaking from the spring valve?

Hi folks, I'm a planted tank keeper who injects CO2. I wanted to see if I could borrow some of your expertise since I'm not getting the fastest help in my realm and there is a lot of time and money at stake as time passes.

You know that little spring valve on the back/side of a Cornelius regulator? Mine has a red spring, I think they're sometimes yellow or green, well when I open the screw on the reg that valve leaks until I get the working pressure to 60psi (we run around 10psi which then routs into a Fabco needle valve for low pressure regulation), when I back the pressure down, all is good until I reach zero and go back up, then it leaks again until I reach 60psi. If I set it at 20psi and run the rig on my tank, the working pressure slowly drops to zero. I read about the tiny hole in the cone requiring a rebuild kit when it leaks, could this be related or another issue altogether?


I can't find anything on the net mentioning this spring valve, or anyone who's dealt with this issue. Thanks in advance if you can help me solve this problem, I'll have a beer waiting for you when you come to town.

Can you post a picture? Or maybe one of the valve and one showing the model number? We have a wide variety of regulators.

Thanks for the response. I'm not positive on the model numb, but this is an image of it, the valve with the spring is the part of the regulator body the juts out in between the gauge and shut off valve (lower left pointing SW). I found some info stating that it's a relief valve but still no info on what it means or what I need to do.

I have the same regulator. It's the overpressure relief valve. Normally there is a ring through it allowing you to manually vent the LP lines. I'd put a little string through there and try manually opening and closing it. If that doesn't help, I'd disassemble and clean. No joy, rebuild it or replace it.

What type of plants do you have?

pldoolittle said:

I have the same regulator. It's the overpressure relief valve. Normally there is a ring through it allowing you to manually vent the LP lines. I'd put a little string through there and try manually opening and closing it. If that doesn't help, I'd disassemble and clean. No joy, rebuild it or replace it.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip, I think I remember seeing a ring in a pic somewhere. Hopefully that'll do the trick, or else I have one more chance to prove I can put something back together successfully.

Laurel said:

What type of plants do you have?

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I've got a mix of everything pretty much. South American and Asian stems, carpeting plants, Java ferns and Anubius. Here's a pic of one of my tanks, the one that'll soon be buried in algae if I don't solve this Co2 problem fast enough.
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/1797/3308mm7.jpg

That's a great looking tank! Beautiful Angel. I keep African Rift lake cichlids with some Vallisneria and java ferns.

Thanks Laurel, got a pic of your tank? I have a buddy w/ a huge lake T tank, but he doesn't try very hard w/ the plants.



Back to the reg; I have no clue what I just did but... After manually opening the valve a few times was unsuccessful, I opened the reg body and quickly realized there is little I can do in the way of cleaning it the way it's built into the body (probably pressed in from the outside), and replacement doesn't look like much of an option either. So I blew inside it really good, tweaked on it a few more times from the other side and put everything back together, and it's working fine now and holding a steady working pressure of 15psi :rockin:

Thanks for the motivation, pldoolittle. If you're ever down in SW FL I'll make good on that beer