Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So I noticed when hooking up my 'new' tank to the timer which controls the pumps, that one of my pumps was on the fritz... Most of the time it would start as it should have, but every now and then it wouldn't start properly/at all, and sometimes it would actually trip the breaker.

So a new pump was purchased to put in its place. Ended up with a Pondmax PU8000, which seems to do the job nicely.



I thought at the same time though, as i've had one of my non-critical air pumps die on me (probably the membrane) that i may as well splash out and get a decent air pump too.

SO i ended up with a Pondmax PA40 - The smaller of the two, thankfully!



Anyway, hooked it up, sealed off 4 of the 6 outlets, leaving two available to use with the airstones i got... It's like a spa! As in properly, a real spa... Very cool, but massively overpowered.

So i tried uncapping one of the outlets to relieve some pressure, and that did an alright job, but also ended up creating a hissing noise to the otherwise *impressively* quiet air pump.


Ended up leaving just one airstone in the new tank, and then running a ~10m long length to my second tank, which i then hooked up a T-piece to and attached two more airstones. That's a little less .... shall we say, violent.



Now at the end of the day, i don't mind the amount of air going into the tanks, it's probably about 10 times more than they have had until now though, and i'm wondering - is it bad for the fish to have *too much* aeration in the water?

I'll add some photos to the thread tomorrow morning when there's a bit more light around... But it does leave me wondering - why not have a speed control on the unit? I may have to create my own if it's going to become an issue.


Cheers!

Chig.

I might be wrong but I don't think it will be a problem. If you have much splashing you might not need the air pump but then again I see where it's a backup and I'm not sure of what fish you are raising so probably a good idea.

Just have silver perch for now, but getting some trout this weekend.

Attached photo is with the single air stone in the tank...

You'll need the extra aeration with the trout

You'll also need a net or other cover to stop the trout from jumping out!

Yeah, a net to go over the top is on saturday morning's todo list.

So far the fish seem to not be bothered by the extra air... infact they even appear to use it as a bit of shelter sometimes. If i move the airstone around, they'll often swim back over to it pretty much instantly.

Not all that surprising. Don't some fish normally hang out under flowing water in rivers/streams? It's an effective way of hiding from predators because the water movement makes the fish harder to notice.

I noticed some additional evaporation when i added airstones to my ft, but it wasnt major. Some may see that as a drawback.

I was chatting with the aquatec(?) Tech guy the other day about this very pump, and he mentioned it will shorten the diaphram life considerably if it has too much back pressure... when I chatted with the sales rep the next day, I was recommended to run 5-6 airstones minimum.
Either that, or one whopping big airstone.

Aparently they took the multiple port manifold out of the box recently because they were having too many returns from people capping off the extra ports!

Small diameter air lines like in the photo will cause significant frictional resistance/backpressure, and reduce airflow- far from ideal for such a pump. I'm running 25mm most of the way for my air discs, down to 19mm for the disc connection.

In my book you can never have too much aeration