Air stone yea or nay?

[HAVAMAL]

I read the yea and nays from doing a google search now I'd like your opinions?

 

[Fishguy2727]

I run air stones on any freshwater tank. I have seen them save too many tanks when filters stop running to not use them.

All my freshwater tanks are planted (no CO2).

 

[jcolon]

+1 with fishguy2727

Impellers in Filters can seize, motors-burn out etc, you lose power and your filter doesn't restart ... but the air-pumps are simple motors that rarely seize or burn out .. and if your filter should crap out when your gone for 3-4 days, an air-stone could be the only thing holding your stock alive by helping oxygen flow into the water. Air-stones are worth their weight in gold.

 

[BBradbury]

Running Airstones

Good morning Hav...

Airstones look nice in the tank as ornaments, but they shouldn't be used in place of or supplement aeration in the tank. The bubbles are just for decoration and add very little aeration. They do provide a little water movement and that's beneficial. Your power filter provides considerably more and the more gas exchange - aeration that takes place, the better.

Gas exchange takes place on the tank surface, the bubbles create a very small surface, so not much gas exchange takes place. A lot of bubbles isn't a lot better.

If you run a larger power filter or better yet, two power filters, you'll have enough water movement to provide aeration for your fish tank, making the bubblers unnecessary.

B

 

[papabear]

No need airstones. Just use filter. Oxygen can come from your plants. Filters seize because of not being maintained.

 

[jcolon]

No need airstones. Just use filter. Oxygen can come from your plants. Filters seize because of not being maintained.

I think the question we should ask is when is an air-stone(s) most useful?
When a filter seizes and or when power is out for extended time.

I agree that a properly filtered and maintained tank will provide more than enough oxygen from filtration .. thus air-stones are more decorative. Properly maintained filters normally wouldn't seize, but filters can seize whenever murphy's law feels like it (on the first night you're out of town for a week) Plus ... I don't know of any filter that runs without power. Want to guess how many people on L.I. still don't have power from Irene?
And while a generator (if you can afford a decent one) should provide power for filters ... the refrigerator, lamps and AC's / heaters are more important.

I wouldn't depend on just plants for Oxygen. While they do add oxygen ... without lights for photosynthesis, they use up Oxygen and give off CO2. Which means if you lose power, and say your tank is in a darkened room like a basement ... they'll only consume Oxygen ... until they wither and die and then they definitely aren't providing Oxygen.

Air-stones attached to a D-sized battery operated air-pump can provide that extra needed surface agitation to better promote gas exchange. It may not be much ... but in the scenario I propose, who wouldn't want one as a backup?

 

[Aces11]

I don't think there is a nay for airstones. They provide extra aeration and decorative bubbles. I have one in my 20g to add surface agitation but the curtain of bubbles is cool as well.

 

[eco23]

+1 with Fishguy and jcolon.

I agree air stones are most often for aesthetics...but I think they provide a fantastic emergency backup system. There'd be nothing worse than going away for a long weekend and coming back to your fish floating because the filter quit and the fish died of oxygen deprivation.

I have also read and heard from trusted sources that air stones increase co2 exchange in a non injected tank since they promote co2 exchange at the surface as well as oxygen (since co2 is in the air around us just like o2).

 

[HAVAMAL]

I decided to purchase one for a lot of the reasons mentioned above, thank you all that responded on this, I've been keeping tanks for over forty years but it was not until recently I decided to start adding live plants and I'm just beginning to learn the ins and the outs.
I do love this forum better than the others!!!!!



I bought the four inch disk instead of the wand and yes I like the aesthetic part of it too

 

[jetajockey]

I agree that air stones are for aesthetics. I don't really think it's important to always run one in the rare event that a filter quits. If you are around your tanks on a daily basis you'll catch a fried filter fast enough to throw on a backup air pump or replace it long before any issue arises.

As far as aerating for co2, don't forget that fish (and plants -at night) also respire, so running an aerator would just maintain the 4 or 5ppm or whatever it is that is in ambient air. Would need to to test to see if this level is higher with fish respiration vs aeration or not, but for a moderately stocked tank I would bet that it is.

 

[papabear]

Oh yah I forgot about power outrages. I guess here in hawaii we don't have to much of those. Guess i should buy battery opperated filter or pump just in case. And I'm glad I don't need one of those thermostat thingys.

Congrats on the buy! Tank looks good!

 

[HAVAMAL]

Thank you!!!!!

 

[Fishguy2727]

Even being around the tank daily won't save them. Not all tanks can handle hours without aeration. I have seen fish die and tanks crash in half the time it would take you to go to work and come back.

Yes, air bubbles provide aeration. Oxygen doesn't know or care if it is at the surface of the tank or the surface of a bubble, it diffuses either way. Small bubbles create a massive amount of surface area per volume (more than the tank's surface in some cases). It is not just increased current, but active aeration. I don't know why it won't catch on in the aquarium hobby (maybe because it is a bunch of hobbyists, not professionals, who read the same things over and over and just keep regurgitating them?) but this is a very common method of active aeration in aquaculture and waste management. But maybe those scientists and professionals are wrong...

 

[killifish lover]

i think i saw bamboo in your tank. bamboo needs to have leaves above the water surfae for it to survive if not it will rot.

 

[jcolon]

i think i saw bamboo in your tank. bamboo needs to have leaves above the water surfae for it to survive if not it will rot.

I'll tell you ... I've had 2 bamboos in my tank for 6 months and they're still going strong ... not even a leaf turn brown.

 

[jetajockey]

Even being around the tank daily won't save them. Not all tanks can handle hours without aeration. I have seen fish die and tanks crash in half the time it would take you to go to work and come back.

Yes, air bubbles provide aeration. Oxygen doesn't know or care if it is at the surface of the tank or the surface of a bubble, it diffuses either way. Small bubbles create a massive amount of surface area per volume (more than the tank's surface in some cases). It is not just increased current, but active aeration. I don't know why it won't catch on in the aquarium hobby (maybe because it is a bunch of hobbyists, not professionals, who read the same things over and over and just keep regurgitating them?) but this is a very common method of active aeration in aquaculture and waste management. But maybe those scientists and professionals are wrong...

Not sure why this has to be an argument, but here goes nothing.

Maybe you are talking about SW tanks? A FW tank that isn't extremely overstocked isn't going to kill any fish from o2 deprivation in just a few hours of a filter being off. There are plenty of people who run just a HOB or canister on their tanks and yet you never hear about when one of these breaks down that there is some kind of catastrophic tank wipeout.

To add to that, I know plenty of people, moreso in other countries where this hobby is still kept at bare minimums, where the common practice is to turn off filtration overnight to save power.

So running an airstone is unnecessary in most cases. It's not about aquaculturists and other professionals being wrong at all, having tons of o2 is great, just not necessary for a normally stocked home aquaria. Besides the fact that running air (sponge filtration) is a standard in aquaculture primarily because of cost efficiency. I know this because I have an alita al-60 linear drive air pump that is piped all around my fishroom, without it I would be paying triple digits every month just to run individual power filters.

If anything, the myth about needing an airstone along side a power filter has been the regurgitation in the hobby for decades.

The bottom line is that yes, in FW tanks adding aeration can be helpful, but no, it's not absolutely necessary and fear of somehow killing your stock in a short time because of a filter malfunction is unwarranted and unsubstantiated.

 

[Fishguy2727]

I have seen it happen. But maybe I didn't? Can you let me know what experiences I am allowed to base recommendations on please?

Use an air pump. If you don't I hope you don't learn the hard way that you should have.

 

[HAVAMAL]

i think i saw bamboo in your tank. bamboo needs to have leaves above the water surfae for it to survive if not it will rot.

Have had the bamboo in there for about four months and it'd doing great, I have some in my river tank where it's only partially submerged and on that one I have rotting? If the bamboo in the community tank starts to show discoloration then I will pull it.

 

[jetajockey]

I have seen it happen. But maybe I didn't? Can you let me know what experiences I am allowed to base recommendations on please?

Use an air pump. If you don't I hope you don't learn the hard way that you should have.

The question is whether it is a common enough occurrence to warn people about the danger of not using one. I say it isn't, and the fact that most fishkeepers don't run both simultaneously proves that it is safe not to.


An example, tanks spring leaks, it happens WAY more often than tank filters going out and killing fish, yet I don't hear anyone warning anyone about that and telling them to put some kind of reinforcement or water catcher underneath their tanks.

It's all good to have your own experiences and recommendations but let's be realistic (is that possible?). There are many people that don't use power filtration at all in their planted tanks.

I don't even have an issue with your position, extra aeration is great in most cases, but your wording implies some kind of doom and gloom warning if someone doesn't do it your way.

 

[Fishguy2727]

It is sharing experience, the entire point of a forum. Letting others know what we have learned the hard way, frequent and infrequent. It hasn't happened to you, good. But that doesn't mean you should recommend others not to. The cost of an air pump is minimal, the electricity needed to run it is also minimal. I think most agree to have one on hand in case something happens, so why not run it all the time? Tanks can't have too much aeration.