Quiet aerator

[eah]

I'm looking for a quiet aerator. The one I have now is an "aquatic gardens air pump 3500". I like that it has the capacity to use it with two separate tanks but gosh is it loud!

Could someone please direct me to one that is nice and quiet?

 

[neilanh]

The whispers aren't bad, but they're not 100% quiet either.

 

[TomK2]

Ahh. Now this is a dilemma. You can try different pumps, or you can try to silence the pump that you have. Funny how a whisper quiet pump in the store sounds like a jet taking off in your bedroom at night . I have seen pumps placed inside glass jars with a rubber stopper and just an air in line and the air out line (ie: all the noise stays in the jar). Suspension techniques on the theory that if the vibrating pump isn't touching anything, it won't make noise. Combinations of the containment/jar technique and the insulation/suspension technique.

I even put my air pumps in a seperate room, only to find that significant pump noise went down the air tubing, into the tank, and then reverbrated out into the display room. I tried air pump mufflers with mixed success:

mufflers

In the end, I just stopped using an air pump. I took the canister filter nozzles and pointed them so that there was surface agitation, and skipped the bubbles all together. So unless you have an under gravel filter that uses airstones to provide the circulation, ya gotta ask yourself how bad you want those bubbles.

 

[Purrbox]

The only truly quite air pumps that I've heard of are the ones that are meant to be used to supply air to an entire fishroom.

 

[An t-iasg]

I had a Rena airpump for awhile, and it was very quiet. The Tetratec I had was very powerful, but loud. The Rena was on a tank in my husband's office, and he didn't want any extra noise in there. The Rena had little rubber feet, and maybe that helped make it quiet.

 

[plecoperson]

I've tried many, and the Whisper ones are the quietest. I put mine on a sponge w/a rubberband to keep it from vibrating off, and I hardly hear it.

 

[tawolcott]

If you have an old mousepad to your computer, those work tooooo

 

[eah]

Thanks for all of the tips, everyone!!

So unless you have an under gravel filter that uses airstones to provide the circulation, ya gotta ask yourself how bad you want those bubbles.

You do make a good point... I think I'll try some muffling first and see where that gets me. Sounds like a good project for my other half.