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Is an air stone necessary ?

Dominik K

Member
Joined
14 Jun 2021
Messages
80
Location
Southampton
As the title says..

If I have a relatively well planted tank and not over stocked as well as plenty of water agitation and good flow + filtration, would getting an airpump/airstone be something I should do ?
 
I like to run one, normally I’ll restrict airflow too so that bubbles are less voracious. In low tech tanks I see them as beneficial, helps with the tanks biochemical oxygen demand.
 
I have one to hand, and run it when the weather gets very hot. It's also useful just in case you run into an oxygen related problem i.e. fish are gasping, but I don't run it all the time.
 
I found that running an air-stone, quickly degasses CO2 at the end of CO2/lighting period and more interesting results in a cleaner tank due to producing different water flows that lifts any settled detritus into the tank to be filtered away.

I turn my air on for 3 hours at starting 15minutes before lights off. Sorry fish if it keeps you awake at bedtime. :eek:
 
@Dominik K No, if your already good on surface agitation and flow throughout the tanks you probably don't need an air-stone... another option is to use a surface skimmer with an aerator. I use this one in both my 151L tanks - will keep off any surface film and aerate the tank at the same time - easy to adjust the air flow / bubbles, very low maintenance and low noise compared to an air-pump (sure, you will still hear the bubbles of course). Now, if your like me having a ton of floating plants (frogbit) the surface skimming might not do much, but it will do a bit still. I run it 24/7 in both my low-tech tanks.
One caveat though, is if you feed lots of flake food you should locate it in the opposite side of where your feeding - or just switch it off when you feed - but thats really no different from situations where you have strong surface agitation.

Cheers,
Michael
 
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Thanks for that info. Im paranoid my critters are suffocating. I lost 2 cherry shrimp but i think thats due to a slight ph/amonia increase.

I got salvinia through the post as well as echinodorus vesuvius and installed a dyi corral.

I did a water reading and im seeing a tiny bit of amonia. So will do a 15% water change today and tomorrow morning. Im scared to do big water changes. Two of my shrimpssasly died and i think thats due to new plants and livestock resulting in a slighr ph/patameters change.
 

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More O2 saturation is always going to be a good thing, it's the prime metric in nitrification . If you have lily pipes raising them to create increased surface agitation will have a similar effect.
 
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