Air Stone Recommendations

[Krish's Aquariums]

Hi Everyone,

I am looking for an air stone that produces small fine bubbles which can easily increase the dissolved oxygen in my hillstream aquarium.

Has anyone got any recommendations?

 

[Jaseon]

Do air stones actually dissolve the oxygen into the water?

 

[X3NiTH]

Lime Wood air block is what you want for the finest bubbles, get a few as they do wear out.

For a ‘thinking outside the box’ longer term solution if you have spare kit laying around then you can use a diffuser meant for gaseous CO2 but feed it compressed air at around 15psi, a standard aquarium pump won’t be able to deliver that pressure, a scuba tank works if you don’t have an air compressor (preferably one with a large storage tank to reduce repetitive short cycling the compressor).

Do air stones actually dissolve the oxygen into the water?

No they increase the air to water contact surface area. The smaller the bubble the larger the surface area to volume ratio allowing more potential for gas dissolution into the water. How much O2 water can potentially hold is dependant on Temperature and Atmospheric pressure.

 

[Krish's Aquariums]

Lime Wood air block is what you want for the finest bubbles, get a few as they do wear out.

For a ‘thinking outside the box’ longer term solution if you have spare kit laying around then you can use a diffuser meant for gaseous CO2 but feed it compressed air at around 15psi, a standard aquarium pump won’t be able to deliver that pressure, a scuba tank works if you don’t have an air compressor (preferably one with a large storage tank to reduce repetitive short cycling the compressor).



No they increase the air to water contact surface area. The smaller the bubble the larger the surface area to volume ratio allowing more potential for gas dissolution into the water. How much O2 water can potentially hold is dependant on Temperature and Atmospheric pressure.

Hello, thank you for that I will look into them. I have thought about using compressed air. With my hillstream tank I wanted to have the minimum amount of equipment in the tank so I was thinking of using a pressurised air system (like you mentioned) with an inline diffuser, I think it would work but I am not 100%.