How to add oxygen without air stone?

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kevfiz

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Hi can anyone advise me on how to add oxygen to my tank without using an air stone?
 
You don't need an air stone. If your filter moves the water round the tank, that's all you need.
Oxygen gets into the water at the surface. As water moves round the tank, oxygen rich water is pushed to the bottom of the tank, and oxygen depleted water is brought to the surface where more oxygen enters the water. This provides enough oxygen, excpet possibly if the temperature is raised to treat whitespot or medication has been added to the tank, both of which reduce the oxygen carrying capacity of the water. In these cases, moving the filter outflow so it causes ripples on the surface is all the tank needs.

Airstones do not directly add oxygen to a tank. They help by churning the water up, as does a filter
 
Put your filter outlet on the surface so it creates more surface turbulence. that will help drive out carbon dioxide and let more oxygen into the tank water.
 
I have surface turbulance. My water tests are pH 6.8 ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 10ppm. The temperature of tank is 27 degrees. The tank is 145 litres its planted but I would not say heavily planted my sowrdtails are always going up to surface so that's what's making me think oxygen is low.
IMG_20200331_153315.jpg
 
As previously mentioned 27c IS TOO HOT for swordtails. There is less O2 in hotter water. Reduce temp to 24c.
Also what size tank and how many fish?
 
It's not to hot I done research. And when I reduced the temperature to 26 as advised on here I started loosing fish. I was advised by aquarium shop to bring it back to 27c and when I did I didn't loose anymore fish.
 
Dropping the water temperature by 1C is not going to cause any fish to die. If you did lose fish when you lowered the temperature, there was probably something else going on.
 
The temperature range for Xiphophorus hellerii (swordtails) is 16-28C/60-82F. The fish will fare much better at temperatures in the middle of the given range; the upper limit is only temporary tolerance.

Livebearers normally spend a lot of time near the surface, so this might be what you are observing. But aside from that, dying fish is obviously being caused by something, and while temperature can be the cause or a factor in weakeningh the fish, a temperature of 26C for this species is not going to cause death. There is something else here.
 
How long have you had the fish and what is your GH?
Swordtails, like most livebearers, need hard water. Your pH readings suggest you may have soft water. If that is the case it would weaken the fish over time and reduce their life expectancy.
 
It's not to hot I done research. And when I reduced the temperature to 26 as advised on here I started loosing fish. I was advised by aquarium shop to bring it back to 27c and when I did I didn't loose anymore fish.
I've been in the hobby 50+ years.... I currently breed, grow out, and sell swordtails (over 200 to date) and am currently growing out 100-200 Red and Pineaple Swordtails. The average temperature across my tanks is 76F. I have culls living just fine in the 65-70F Turtle pond that gets 55F water changes straight from the well! With very rare exception. tropical fish do well at 76-78F (24.4 - 25.5c). Swordtails do very well down to 70F (21.1c) and will not die at 76F!!! If fish are dying at 76-78F, there's some other root cause.
Fish metabolism increases at higher temperatures and oxygen levels decrease. Fish gulping air at the surface is typically either poor water quality, an ammonia spike, or a low level of oxygen.
@Byron and @seangee posted as I was typing)
 
Maybe I am just been paranoid. They do use the whole tank just every often they will go up to top and spend about a minute or two up there then go back around the rest of tank for a few minutes
 
I spent 5 mins trying to get a video and was unable to. So maybe I was just worrying for nothing
 

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