Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

For better airation in my FT I got a couple of large aquarium air-stones and dropped them in, Bugga they wanted to go end up...., ha fixed that

piece of 20mm PVC pipe filled with fishing weights, trying out cement (from another job) caps on either end of pipe and zip tied to air stone.

flat on the base all good.

Hey Tonzz, my first thought was "that ought to do it" also, are those fishing weights made of lead? If so would one need to be concerned about that leaching? Wouldn't the cement work by itself?

leaching? Leaching in PVC pipe I hope not. Cant see how, ah well if goldies snuff it, I guess thats something to consider

I think he meant the fishing weights. Probably a good point, I'd swap them over to a few rocks or something like that. I'm pretty sure they are made of lead.

Try marbles (no glueing the endcaps) and I think Rupe also recommended ceramic insulators

haha the wife goes around hunting them. Living in rural SA, her car has a couple cold chisels, hammer, cordless saw, damn she wont miss a few.

Air stones are what kill many an air pump and air pump that runs on 000 pressure will last a lot longer
My current air pump runs into a 3/4 in stainless pipe with a few 1/16 holes in it the only pressure on the pump is the depth of the tank
Had a bloke with a 4 outlet pump and because he dident need all the air he just blocked off 2 outlets and then wondered the the pump failed every 4 months or so

The PVC pipe off cuts have the fish weights inside them, then capped both ends, how can the lead leach out.

Not nit picking but Food&Fish can you post pics of your pump and stainless pipe work.
I'am confused because Cheidys shop sells Air pump with airstones, so with all their knowledge why are they selling them if likely to cause break-downs.

Again Iam not picking fights or arguements.

Think I am with F&F on this one. I would also like to see a graph on the efficiency of airstones over time. Most air pumps are PDP's and I think bioslime kills them. Only imho.

If the lead isn't coming into contact with the water, it should be fine. Just be aware lead is quite lethal to fishies.

I'm using a pair of 18" long airstones in my tank. They don't seem to affect the pump much. Not a scientific method, but I noticed after attaching the hose to the airstone, the pitch of the sound the pump was making remained about the same. If the pump motor was straining you can usually hear a change in the noise it makes.

Not much to see here goes

Depends on what type of air pump you have. A piston pump requires a 10-20% loading as they are designed to run against a back pressure otherwise they free-stroke, operate at higher temps and rattle themselves to failure.

To work this out you need to know the L/m of your air diffusers, which usually only comes with better quality ones. The cheap chinese stuff could be anyones guess. So as an example, if you have a 70L/m piston pump you would use 2 x 20L/m air diffusers or 4 x 10L/m air diffusers.

You don't really hear much of a noise change but they definitely get hotter

In my first system I had an electromagnetic pump load it up and it got hot and played up put in a main line with a valve on the end to bypass air not needed then you turn it off till the stones start bubbling and the rest bypasses that pump was still running when I sold the house
Yes over time I mucked with other pumps just cos I could
But always went back to the electromagnetic

Water 1 meter deep will give you a certain loading