How To Add Airstone To Sponge Filter

Home· Freshwater Aquarium Weblog· Air Stones: The Hole-and-corner Weapon Every Aquarium Needs

Having enough oxygen in your aquarium is ane of those things people often accept for granted, but it'due south and then vital to your fish's wellness. How tin you make sure your fish is getting plenty air? Typically, the well-nigh obvious signs of oxygen impecuniousness in fish include lots of resting at the lesser of the tank, a lack of appetite, and rapidly moving gills. In a worst-case scenario, your fish may first gasping for air at the surface of the water, which means information technology's definitely time to accept action!

The first step is to exercise a large water change, which will immediately infuse the tank with fresh oxygen. If the fish immediately perk upwardly, the 2nd step is to determine why the aquarium was suffering from lack of oxygen. Common causes include loftier water temperatures, also many fish in the tank, certain medications or chemical treatments, and not enough water surface agitation.

How do I Get More Oxygen in My Fish Tank?

You can directly measure the dissolved oxygen content using a water test kit or digital meter. Ideally, the oxygen content in a freshwater fish tank should exist around 7 to 8 ppm (or mg/Fifty). To effigy out the best kind of setup for increasing oxygen in your aquarium, nosotros ran several experiments using a dissolved oxygen meter and here's what we discovered:

Experiment results to increase dissolved oxygen in different aquarium setups

The experiment results for increasing dissolved oxygen in dissimilar aquarium setups

Note: Powerheads and circulation pumps were besides tested, but the exact results were non recorded. The venturi-type powerhead did non perform as well equally the powerhead pointed towards the top of the tank that created surface agitation. A apportionment pump was also tested, just information technology did not improve the oxygen content significantly.

Based on our experiments, we definitely run across that increasing gas commutation at the water surface has a positive impact on oxygen content. Gas exchange in aquariums is the process in which carbon dioxide from the h2o (a waste matter product produced by your fish) exits into the air and new oxygen from the air is dissolved into the h2o. Given this information, hither are three proven means to increase oxygenation in your aquarium:

Buy tanks with a large surface expanse.
When using only a sponge filter in the twoscore-gallon tank versus 55-gallon tank, the 40-gallon tank had much college oxygen content. The reason is considering the 40-gallon breeder tank has a greater amount of area compared to the 55-gallon tank. Therefore, a long, shallow aquarium is preferred over a tall, narrow 1.

Don't let floating plants cover the water surface.
When using a sponge filter in the 55-gallon tank, the experiment with floating plants had significantly less oxygen compared to the experiment without them. In full general, live aquarium plants can be very useful in producing additional oxygen for your fish. Nonetheless, don't allow floating plants take over your entire tank because it limits the amount of gas exchange.

Frogbit and duckweed

Besides many floating plants can profoundly reduce oxygen levels in your fish tank.

Increase surface agitation with filtration and air stones.
Proficient surface agitation is clearly the fundamental to effective gas exchange where carbon dioxide in the water is swapped out for more than oxygen from the air. One of the best ways to do this is by calculation at least one air source (similar an air stone or sponge filter) to every aquarium, no matter what other filtration you lot're using. Yous can attain adept surface agitation using other methods like a hang-on-back filter, but it comes at the cost of having very loud splashing sounds from the falling water.

How to Add Air to Your Aquarium

Adding an air source to your fish tank is very easy – all you demand is an air pump to button air into the water, airline tubing for the air to travel through, and a bank check valve to prevent h2o from flowing into the tubing.

How to attach an air pump in an aquarium

Those three components reside outside of the aquarium, but the final bit of airline tubing (on the left-hand side) enters the water. From at that place, at that place are several types of attachments you lot can connect to the airline tubing inside the aquarium.

An air stone is a pocket-size weighted bubbler that produces very small bubbles in the water. This simple accompaniment helps to gradually lengthened air into the tank and minimizes the amount of bubbling noise you'll hear.

A sponge filter uses air to provide mechanical and biological filtration. Equally the bubbles rises from the bottom of the sponge to the summit, water is sucked in through the sponge walls, thus removing waste particles and clearing up the water. Beneficial bacteria as well like to live in the sponge, helping to covert waste compounds into safer by-products.
A moving bed filter creates an optimal environment for biological filtration. As air travels through the bedchamber of swirling media granules, the constant churning of oxygenated h2o greatly enhances growth of benign bacteria.

3 types of air sources and filtration for aquariums

Add more than air to your aquarium using an air rock, sponge filter, or moving bed filter.

All these methods of adding air to your fish tank promote excellent surface agitation and oxygenation of h2o, providing an ideal, stress-costless surround for your fish to live in.