Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I found this video on youtube and then did some homework and found you can pretty easily make a venturi that'll pull 12PSI of air vacuum. Would something like this work in aquaponics in place of an airpump?

Haha. I just about wet myself laughing when he turned that on.
Pretty effective! That baby is moving a lot of air.

I wonder, would the water pump (or the portion of water flow diverted to drive venturi) use less power than an air pump moving the same volume of air?

I hear the ghost of Franks past....

This is a cheap 13 dollar water pump I drilled a hole in the impeller section and inserted an air tube. Works pretty good, plus it moves the water.

A Venturi works great, but the effect in the video shows much better because it's a marine tank. The air is more diffused in salt water as in fresh water.

I use one in my FT except it is a little different design. The pump I use to swirl the FT has en elbow straight out of it, I drilled a hole in the back of the elbow and inserted an airline which I hang over the side of the FT, as the water passes the tube it draws the air in.

We use one here, reducing the pipe size and drilling a small hole, then expanding the pipe size back up again. Works pretty well...

I don't know if I'd think about a venturi as being "instead" of an air pump, mainly because our air pumps are the back up system, can't be without a backup system.

I'm not entering into the efficiency debate... Search on the forum for lots of discussion in the past about it.

spoil sport isnt he ...

To be fair its been done and done again.

No that that stops us on other topics.

Water pumps to move air...air pumps to move water...and it all has fish poo in it! What is wrong with us?
I think we're all archimedes screw-ed in the head!

In CHIFT PIST would it work to put a venturi in the return line to the sump? DO in the sump can only be good surely? Does a venturi need a pump pressure or would a fall of a couple of feet be enough to drive it?

For that matter, would I be helping my fish by adding DO in the sump before it pumps back to the FT? Or would I just be wasting my time and need to put venturi and pumps in FT instead?

I would imagine you'd need the pump pressure to pull enough vacuum for decent aeration. I was thinking of putting mine right at the pump outlet, then letting it run through the hose with air and coming out in the FT.

Oh no.....

The fall from you FT to GBs to sump is not likely to be enough to operate a venturi. If your water was falling from your roof garden to your basement then it would work just fine.

Pumping water is lots of work. What is involved in doing the work is getting the water to a certain height or pressure (from the point of the pump they are exactly the same thing) coupled with a certain flow rate. When you are asking your circulation pump to also be in effect an airpump you are asking it to do something it was not designed to do. You need your water pump to circulate the water through the system in many systems this provides enough aeration but if you want more then buy a tool that is made to do the job, ie an air pump. An low pressure circulation pump and an air pump will get more air into your water for a given amount of electricity than using a higher pressure water pump by itself.