Inline Air Stone?

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MarkP

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jun 9, 2006
Messages
154
So, I've got a really, seriously crazy dumb idea.

My wife recently bought me a 110 gallon aquarium. And... it was drilled.

I've loving it, and am having as much or more fun debating what to put in it as I am putting stuff in it. But.... With it being drilled, I'm becoming obsessed with the idea of no ugly stuff running down from the top.

And... I'm looking at running some air into it.

I'd prefer not to have airline running down the back of the tank and ruin the clean look I have so far.

So, I'm thinking about a Inline Reactor not unlike those used to inject Co2 into planted tanks, but instead of a Co2 tank, hooking up an air pump.

In theory, I could adjust the air flow such that much of the air injected is dissolved into the water, and not even have huge bubble trails coming up from the filter outflows. Hook up a bubble counter, just to be sure I'm getting air at all, and adjust the airflow to just below where I start seeing too much bubbles.

I've done a couple of searches for anything similiar, and haven't found much. Heck, I haven't found anything.

I'm looking at specs on air pumps now- I have 5 PSI running throughout most of my filter- and am desperating trying to think of reasons why this wouldn't work. Anyone else think of some?
 
Actually if your filters move enough water and you have a little surface agitation there is no need for any kind of airstone or air pump.
 
Bingo. I'm moving between 600 and 700 GPH (Don't have an exact figure for my head height), but because it's a drilled tank, and I'm attempting to have nothing hanging off the back, I have almost no surface agitation.
 
Maybe I'm not describing the setup well enough.

I have 4 holes drilled in the bottom of my tank. 2 holes drain into my pump, filter, heater, etc. 2 holes return that water. The return holes have very short pipes directing the flow- a few inches- and are the only hardware above my gravel, other then lights hidden in the hood. The outflow from the filters causes a very minor bend in the water at the surface, so, almost no agitation. This is with these pipes pointing straight up.

Yeah, I could add visible hardware- Longer pipes would direct the flow better, and cause more agitation. Or a powerhead. Or running airline down the back. And one of those solutions might end up being what I go with. And they all can be hidden to some extant.

But if I can keep from adding any hardware inside the tank, I will. I can think of plenty of reasons why it would be simpler and easier to add hardware and hide it, but none as to why it wouldn't work.
 
I would give it a try as is you may not need anything, at most just send one return close to the surface. An air pump does not dissolve air in the water column it just breaks up the surface allowing more gas exchange.
 
never hurts anything to try, make ya small rig in th ebathtub and work on the adjustments b4 setting it in the tank
 
I agree I don't really think that an air pump is necessary if all you have to do is adjust the spray bar. I have one just because I like the look of it and my fish really enjoy playing in the bubbles.
 
never hurts anything to try, make ya small rig in th ebathtub and work on the adjustments b4 setting it in the tank
 
Dunno if anyone was interested in the outcome of this experiment, but there is actually a very good reason why it failed.

After building the device, I could not turn down the airflow enough- I either had massive amounts of bubbles from outflow (Which I didn't particularly care for, but some might find acceptable) or I had no air flowing into the reactor.

Some further digging around shows that Nitrogen and Oxygen (Which is basically what I'm injecting) dissolves hundreds of times slower then pure Co2. It might still be possible with an insanely large reactor or somesuch- Which I think is what rich311k was trying to tell me- It's very hard to dissolve any significant amount of air without a huge surface area (IE, the entire surface of the water in your tank).

A little more work and I added a venturi to the reactor- This allowed me the fine level of control I needed, and I was able to add a small enough amount of air that it was almost totally dissolved, and I was left with almost invisible "microbubbles" similar to some of Tom Barr's Co2 diffusion methods. This was entirely a proof of concept test, as I will NOT be using an inline reactor with a venturi air injector under my tank- A Venturi air injector turns into a leak in the event of pump failure, and I've never met a check valve I trusted that much.

So I parted with 20 bucks and bought a maxijet and am hiding it in a corner, which is what I think anyone sane would suggest (after realizing I have a drilled tank, and as such, no spray bar, no any desire to add a huge piece of visible plastic).

On the up side, I got to build stuff, test a theory, have a lot of fun, and I now have an inline Co2 reactor sitting on the shelf and ready to attach should I ever decide to inject Co2 into this tank.
 
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