Hello I have a 2 year old 10 gallon tropical community tank!

[squirley]

My tank holds 1 zebra danio, 1 glofish danio and 2 white cloud. Plus 2 nerite mystery racer snails. It is planted with 2 anubis, 3 bamboo and 1 plant im not sure what its called.
Top fin tank starter with an air stone.
I really enjoy the plants and watching them get new leaves, so fun!
I have been looking for a thread on how often people use the air stone and have not found one yet. I am currently using it 8 hours a day and turning it off at night. Do you
use it more or less? Thanks for reading my post!!

 

[MattW]

Welcome to the forum!

As to the airstone question, I reckon you will get a variety of answers. I run airstones as an assurance that oxygen levels are enough for my fish. I do run filters that agitate the water's surface, so dissolved oxygen levels are high anyway, but the airstone assures me that oxygen levels are sufficient. As for duration, I have my air pumps on a smart plug, avg time is 11 hours. I do have 20-30 minute runtimes in the early hours, as my tanks are mainly plants that use up oxygen when there is no light. Again as an assurance, so I don't wake up to a tank with floating fish.

 

[Innesfan]

Welcome. As @MattW stated, you will get a variety of answers on this. Mine run 24/7.

 

[jaylach]

 

[Colin_T]

Unless you are adding carbon dioxide (CO2) to the aquarium for plant growth, you just have the airstone running 24/7.

If you turn the airstone off at night, the plants won't be producing any oxygen because it's dark. This means the filter bacteria and fish can use up a lot of the oxygen in the water if there isn't enough surface turbulence.

If you have trouble sleeping at night due to the noise (you will get use to it), you can reduce the air coming out of the pump by adding a T-piece and tap to the airline or loosening the screw on the side of the pump, where the air chamber is attached to the inside of the air pump.

 

[GaryE]

I can't use airstones here as they clog up almost immediately. If I could, I'd run them more at night, for the reasons @Colin_T noted. But you aren't overstocked and hopefully where you are, the tank isn't too hot by this time of year. So the airstone is probably more for show than anything else.

 

[Colin_T]

I can't use airstones here as they clog up almost immediately.

Look for multi-coloured plastic airstones that can be taken apart and cleaned. They cost about the same as a normal sand airstone but can be cleaned and even joined together to make longer airstones.