airpump or powerhead?

[mrquad]

what do you think is the best source of oxygenation and why? thanks!

 

[dragonfish18]

power heads dont make oxygen for your tank...but plants and air pumps will

 

[mrquad]

power heads dont make oxygen for your tank...but plants and air pumps will

oh, ok.. that's what i heard from a friend.. so, what exactly a powerhead does?

thanks..

 

[crazyryceman]

you can hook up a air tube to some powerheads and that creates a lot of oxygen

 

[chrislxf]

if you hookup a air tube on the effluient nozzel, it will do the same job as the air pump. IMO powerhead do a better job in circulating water and areate the tank at the same time. Bear in mind though since powerhead is inside the tank, it will raise water temp due to energy release by the motor.

just my 2 cents.

 

[ceewah]

A powerhead is a air pump as well. Just hook up and air tube in it.

 

[Freshwater Tim]

It depends on if you want bubbles blowing across your tank or gently rising....personally I prefer the latter.

If you are going to get an air pump...get two (one for a back up)!!

My .02 cents (Canadian)!

 

[FSM]

if you hookup a air tube on the effluient nozzel, it will do the same job as the air pump. IMO powerhead do a better job in circulating water and areate the tank at the same time. Bear in mind though since powerhead is inside the tank, it will raise water temp due to energy release by the motor.

just my 2 cents.

An efficient powerhead most likely doesn't use much more than 20 watts...most isn't converted to heat, and even if it was, would a 20 watt heater running constantly do much?

 

[Toby_H]

My .02 cents (Canadian)!

"Just my cent & 3/4ths..." lol


A 20 Watt powerhead would create FAR less heat than a 20 W heater. The heater is designed to use all of the energy to create heat... the powerhead is designed to use all of it's energy to create motion with only a small amount of heat being create due to imperfect mechanics...


As for oxygenation... Essentially, you need two things...

1. Surface agitation... this is any disturbance of the surface. It does not need to be water splashing upwards, any form of movement will do. Bubbles breaking at the surface works well... HOBs returning into the surface work well... A canister or powerhead making waves works just as fine...

2. Proper water circulation... Water at the surface becomes oxygenated, but you need your water column in general to be constantly diluting itself with itself to move that oxygen from the surface to spread throughout the tank.

This is ultra simple to achieve and standard forms of filtration typically serve this function just fine. If, your fish appear to be starving for oxygen (most commonly noted by seeing them nipping at the surface) Then you likely suffer from not enough water movement in general, which leads to a whole list of problems...

The bubbles themselves do not add enough oxygen to the water to both factoring in. They do provide miniature "surface to air interfaces" increasing the overall "surface area" of an aquarium... but I invite any of you to calculate the approximate surface area of the amount of bubbles produced by a bubbler that are in the tank at any one given moment... and compare that value to the surface area of the water's surface (factor in the increase due to agitation )

 

[PeacockBassMan]

sounds like a lot of math to me....I just have a bubble curtain.