Do You Keep Your Aerators On?

[DrKebab]

Well, I am new to aquariums and I have always wondered if people keep their aerators on overnight? I do and it's a hard time adjusting to but is it really necessary to keep it on 24/7 just like a filter?

 

[shelaghfishface]

hi Drkebab ( nice name lol)
i keep mine on all night, and day except for when i was running co2 then they were off in the day and on in the night, my platys hate having no movement in the tank.
shelaghxx

 

[beany_bot]

Its not neccesary

Misconconception about bubbles: many people think that the bubbles going up through the water oxegenate or aeriate it. this is wrong. only at the surface of the water does this take place, and if your filter is nice and high in the water, causing turbulance on the surface then you dont need an aereator atall. The bubbles just serve to cause disturbance at the surface of the water helping to oxegenate it. i have never had an air pump/stone, with no problems for 15 years. just make sure that the surface of the water is "choppy" or moving about and there is no need for bubbles.

 

[kewskills]

I only had aeration for the look of it, as said above surface movement is what is needed to aid gaseous exchange, bubbles just happen to aid this when they break the surface of the water.

 

[Plecs&Puffers]

I have mine on all the time for the fish.

 

[Sofia]

I switch off the aerator in the tank in the bedroom at night because it's just too noisy!!! I don't need it but my tetra love swimming in and out of it so I don't have the heart to remove it.

 

[DrKebab]

Ah ic... so would a sponge filter with an aerator help aerate the aquarium? I am not sure if sponge filters cause turbulence, but my friend gave me a free ten gallon tank and I was thinking of using a sponge filter.

 

[djultimate]

I have a bubble wall which is on all day till 11pm , as it's to noisey with the tank in my bedroom.
My filter outlet is sat just below water level so causes enough water movement for it to be off

 

[geo7x]

Bubbles pumped into the tank do not aerate the tank by any significant amount, the ripple caused by a regular filter flow is plenty. Bubble walls/ air stones etc are purely decorational and fish are fine without them.

 

[LauraFrog]

If you have a sponge or air driven filter, you will need to leave the air pump on all the time. The air is what drives it - no air, you lose the cycle, dead fish.

 

[BBrain]

Aeration definitely adds oxygen to the water. Put an airstone in a bag of distressed, rolling over fish that you've just brought home, and see them get reactivated very quickly.

If you have plants, they respire at night, because without light, they stop photosynthesising, so they reverse from releasing oxygen into the water, to absorbing oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. So that is the most important time to aerate your planted tank. In pond aquaculture, fish deaths from low dissolved oxygen mostly occur early in the morning, because that is the time of lowest dissolved oxygen.... because the plants have been using it up all night (along with the fish, of course).

If you keep an airstone on continuously, it will keep your water circulating, hence oxygenated, in the event that your mechanicals break down. Keep in mind that an aquarium system is a closed system, and the various artificial components attached to it, such as filters & powerheads, allow it to support more fish than if it was just a plain glass box with stagnant water. If any of those components stop running, the aquarium will no longer have the carrying capacity it had. If your airstones keep running, the tank at least has circulation and oxygen replenishment. And the biobacteria in the substrate and on other surfaces will still get needed oxygen to survive, protecting against an ammonia spike. So it's good insurance to fit each tank with a battery-powered airpump, that comes on whenever the power goes out.

 

[geo7x]

Aeration definitely adds oxygen to the water. Put an airstone in a bag of distressed, rolling over fish that you've just brought home, and see them get reactivated very quickly.

Airstones definately does not add any significant amount of oxygen to the water in a tank, I don't know about you but for one thing I don't keep my fish in a bag. Secondly, the fish would only be perked up by the slight water agitation and noise created by an airpump.

If you have plants, they respire at night, because without light, they stop photosynthesising, so they reverse from releasing oxygen into the water, to absorbing oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. So that is the most important time to aerate your planted tank. In pond aquaculture, fish deaths from low dissolved oxygen mostly occur early in the morning, because that is the time of lowest dissolved oxygen.... because the plants have been using it up all night (along with the fish, of course).

The surface agitation created by the filter creates more than enough dissolved oxygen within the tank, airpumps/stones are simply unnecessary if you are worried about low oxygen levels. Fish are not going to die in a tank without an airpump, this could only possibly happen in a small overstocked pond with no surface agitation.

If you keep an airstone on continuously, it will keep your water circulating, hence oxygenated, in the event that your mechanicals break down. Keep in mind that an aquarium system is a closed system, and the various artificial components attached to it, such as filters & powerheads, allow it to support more fish than if it was just a plain glass box with stagnant water. If any of those components stop running, the aquarium will no longer have the carrying capacity it had. If your airstones keep running, the tank at least has circulation and oxygen replenishment. And the biobacteria in the substrate and on other surfaces will still get needed oxygen to survive, protecting against an ammonia spike. So it's good insurance to fit each tank with a battery-powered airpump, that comes on whenever the power goes out.

Surface agitation is the most effective way of getting more dissolved oxygen in the water, airpumps do not create very much surface agitation and the filter output creates plenty. The bubbles created do absolutely nothing as they reach the surface far too quickly to dissolve. Agreed an airstone would be better than nothing in an emergency but it is not enough to warrant leaving one on continously and in the event of a powercut fish will be fine for hours.

Airstones and pumps are purely decorational and serve no other purpose.

 

[OldMan47]

If you are going to run a sponge filter, it will get better flow if you use a power head instead of an air stone to power it. A power head will also move a lot of water and end up disturbing the water surface enough for good gas exchange. I have a 40 gallon with a large sponge filter, 6 inch diameter, and the power head is about 4 inches under water. The fish are all fine and very active with no air stone so I know the filter is stirring the water enough to have the surface water mix back into the main bulk of the water. That is all that is needed to get the good gas exchange at the water surface that keeps the oxygen levels up. Look at the surface of your tank some time then compare that to the surface of the air bubbles coming from the air stone that are actually in the water. I would be very surprised if even 10% of the tank's gas exchange was going on anywhere but the top surface.

 

[BBrain]

I don't know about you but for one thing I don't keep my fish in a bag.

I didn't say that I KEEP my fish in a bag. I'm talking about a fish in a transport bag, of course.

I am aware that there is little gaseous exchange between an air bubble and the water, as the bubble ascends, especially with a coarse-bubble airstone. The take-home here is that both filters and airstones can, if they are set up to circulate water well, bring deep water up to the surface, where it then has time to exchange gases with the atmosphere. That said, I agree that if a filter inflow can be set to plunge well into the water, more water will circulate than with most aeration systems, especially if the airstone is not near the bottom of the tank. I keep the water level a bit low in my tanks, so the HOB filter inflow moves more water than if the water was higher. That makes my tanks noisier, but I'm pretty happy with the combination of that plus a deep airstone or two in each tank.

My point about automatic battery-powered air pumps is that we generally don't stock our tanks to their stagnant capacity, but to their mechanized capacity. In other words, most aquariums are holding more fish than they could without water circulation (and filtration). Therefore, fish health can be compromised when that circulation stops. Power outages in my part of the world can last a long time; up to a day or two, so a $20 aeration system seems like cheap emergency preparedness to me, when a bunch of fishes start competing for a dwindling oxygen supply.

Apart from power outages, most fish keepers have seen fish gasping at the surface at times, and have seen the relief that an airstone can bring them. And even when they aren't yet at the point of gasping at the surface, but still need a bit more oxygen, because of ill health or the side effects of certain medications, or simply because of warmer water (the warmer the water, the less dissolved oxygen it can hold), fish health professionals and medication manufacturers recommend aeration to help bring them added oxygen.....they wouldn't prescribe aeration for an ailing fish, if it did nothing but offer decoration, as in your statement: "Airstones and pumps are purely decorational and serve no other purpose."


This topic reminds me of the thing that I miss the most from my first tank (circa 1959). It was a ceramic Tyrannosaurus Rex with an airline inside, and the air bubbles released inside its mouth made it chomp its jaw up and down! Ah, the good old days, eh?

 

[OldMan47]

I've been there Wet Coaster. My first tank, at about the same time, ran completely on air. Air ran the decorations, it ran the HOB filter that used a lift tube to get the water over the edge of the tank instead of an impeller, it was used to provide almost all the circulation in the tank and yes we are no longer as restricted in how many fish we can keep as we were then. I will never say that I don't have air in my tanks because I do in some of them. My power is a little more reliable so I can count on the filter to keep my water well oxygenated. I still use air to circulate water in a tank that has no filter but have found no need for an air stone for oxy. I have had fish gasp at the surface of a new tank but found that a water change helped a lot more than an air supply. I had messed up my cycle and that is what had caused the stress.