Airation/Oxygenation

[BHinAK]

I'd like to hear some words of wisdom about how the experts introduce oxygen into a tank with fish. Baffles are installed into sumps to filter micro bubbles and I have never seen pictures with air tubes on the powerheads nor spray bars above the warters surface.

I have in my 72g puffer/trigger tank have sprayed down with spraybar, airated with power heads and broke surface tention with power heads pointing up. I know macro algea in sumps with the lights on 24/7 remove CO2 and give off O2 (is that my answer).

Are O2 saturation meters worth the money to have, never read anyone here talk about them.

The reason I bring this up is twice so far I have, I think, deprived The Ref (my Sailfin) of oxygen. He wasn't acting right and he got red around his armpits next to his gills. This happened a few days after I filled the tank durning a water change to the point the spraybar was underwater. He came around the the day after I opened the air intakes full on the power heads.

[Woodstock]

Increasing surface aggitation, air stones, skimmers, etc help a lot... but the strongest way to oxygenate is via lighting. Strong lighting engages photosynthisis in corals and algae. Having the fuge light on opposite the tank lights will help keep the oxygen up during the night hours. Unless your tank is very overpopulated and has poor flow, it should provide enough oxygen for the fish.

Red around the gills and fins sounds more like a bacterial infection or maybe some sort of gill flukes. Is it scratching or darting? Make sure you water is of good quality... do several water changes. If the fish isn't eating, you may want to quarantine it and treat appropriately.

[BHinAK]

That insident with the sailfin happened weeks ago and went away after about 3 days. The Ref is 100% today and will be working the Super Bowl this year. He'll be raising his fins durning the extra point kicks.

He was taking B12 and Aminos that he got from one of the guys in the locker room on the Seachem team.

[Witfull]

Originally Posted by BHinAK

The Ref is 100% today and will be working the Super Bowl this year. He'll be raising his fins durning the extra point kicks.

does make bad calls and over-turn interceptions? lol

[Nucem]

Hey!!!

[wickjr]

I'm with ya on the overturned INT, Witful. I thing the Sailfin coulda made that call. Oh well, the Steelers still held on. Nothing against the Colts, Nucem. Just a Notre Dame fan wanting to see The Bus go out right. I am from Cincinnati, so you can probably guess I'm no Steeler fan. But since the Bengals got knocked off....
Hey BHiNak, tell the ref to watch what he takes from the "guys in the locker room". Maybe that's the source for the redness to begin with

[Nucem]

Sorry for jacking the thread. You know it's a sorry day when the
Refs try like crazy to give you the game and you still can't do squat.

[reefjitsu]

The way to achive aeration is increasing surface area and water movement. This is why falling water is the best way to aerate water. Also, in a fish only tank, you might want to look into lowering the temp. a couple degrees. The amount of dissolved oxygen in water is largely a function of temperature. Lower temps will hold more oxygen, higher temps less. One last note on aeration, the bubbles that air bubblers produce do not directly add much oxygen to the water. The bubbles are not usually exposed to water long enough for sufficient gas exchange to occur. They work by moving the water, and causing more of the water to be exposed to the surface where gas exchange can occur.

[Woodstock]

The Need to Breathe

The Need to Breathe, part II

The Need to Breathe, Part III

Conclusions and Recommendations
<HR align=left width="75%" color=#006699 SIZE=1>While this work is not comprehensive, it does indicate that some methods are better than others at maintaining or increasing oxygen levels. Based on what I have shown in this paper, the following conclusions and recommendations are made:

• Reef tanks approximate the cyclical nature of oxygen dynamics found in the field.
• Variation on daily and seasonal cycles is the rule rather than the exception on natural coral reefs, and appears to be the rule in reef aquaria, as well.
• Aquaria can and do become hypoxic at night and such a state may pose a risk to hypoxia-intolerant organisms. Cloudy water in shipping containers and tanks is a cause for concern as oxygen levels are measured to decline rapidly and to very low levels.
• Gas impermeable bags packed with an oxygen cap result in high water oxygen levels even over long periods of time. The levels are, in some cases, extremely high and may be a cause for concern in hyperoxia-sensitive species. Gas permeable bags are not permeable enough to ensure adequate oxygen levels in bags containing living specimens over normal overnight shipping durations.
• Aquaria can and do become saturated or supersaturated with oxygen during the day, and this is a result of oxygen resulting from irradiance of photosynthetic organisms. In no case was saturation or supersaturation measured without photosynthesis.
• Airstones and skimmers appear to be a very effective means of oxygenating small water volumes. Their effect on larger water volumes appears to be less. While the effect may be relative, the larger tanks and systems described here utilized powerful skimming or air pumps, and to gain an equivalent amount of oxygen as occurs in small water volumes would likely require air pumps or skimmers far larger than those commonly employed by aquarists. This includes data from a coral farm where very large commercial sized skimmers and high surface area/volume ratios failed to produce water even nearly saturated with oxygen at night with a heavy coral population.
• Powerheads and recirculating pumps do not appear to greatly increase the oxygen saturation state of seawater aquaria. Instead, they probably serve to move oxygenated waters to areas of the tank that are locally lower in oxygen resulting from respiration within the tank.
• Using algae in reverse daylight tanks appears to be an effective means of keeping oxygen levels at normoxic levels at night. This effect is pronounced even in tanks and systems that employ protein skimmers and airstones.

[BHinAK]

Looks like I got to get that Sump/refug going. Got all the stuff. I don't have a problem keeping temp down around 74-76.

[Yarr]

Id say all you really need is surface water flwo for gas exchange and a skimmer.. the maount of O2 pintroduced into the water during skimmer should be more than enough for most tanks. If it is adecent skimmer and the tank isnt over populated of course