Surface Agitation / Oxygenation question

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Buc_Nasty

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Jun 28, 2010
157
2
31
California
So i know that surface tension needs to be broken in order for fish to have enough air...my question is does the degree to which there is surface agitation matter, or as long as the tension is broken somewhere it'll be ok?

I ask because I have the marineland double bright LED's, and I have a whole lot of surface agitation from my canister filters, but it makes so much of a shimmer effect on the 3d background of the tank that its completely overwhelming...I want to decrease surface agitation to prevent this but I'm worried the fish might not have enough air...??
 
As long as your filters have good flow I wouldn't worry about it too much. You could use the spraybar attachment facing the back wall of the tank. Kinda back and up, so there's still surface movement but it's isolated to the back edge of your tank.

If it's really an issue you could add a small airstone if you don't mind the aesthetics.
 
Just put some aerators on there and you should be fine even with less surface agitation. also what temperature are you keeping the tank? just remember the warmer the water is the less oxygen it will have.
 
aerators as in air stone?
Even the slightest ripples on the surface cause a ton of shimmer all over the background...I was hoping I could just have a nozzle pointing straight down perpendicular to the surface...you guys think i could get away with that?
temp is 79.
I currently have the setup so no equipment whatsoever is visible and I'd like to keep it that way. I'll try redirecting the nozzles or maybe use a spraybar but I havent figured out a good way to do it yet. It sucks these LED's are awesome otherwise and i never considered this might be a problem before I bought it. The tank looks so great with the pumps off haha
 
i would keep the pumps running and turn them off when you want to take pics/shoot a video or just relax and enjoy the tank, then turn them back on when you're done.
 
Chizzle said:
i would keep the pumps running and turn them off when you want to take pics/shoot a video or just relax and enjoy the tank, then turn them back on when you're done.
Click to expand...
Yuck. I'll figure out a better option than that haha. I'll post a video tomorrow so you can see what I'm talking about...its like seizure causing how crazy the ripple effect on the background is...almost painful to look at the tank to the point where if I cant figure out anything else I'll sell the LED and get power compact or something
 
One option you might consider is a wet/dry sump. They excel like nothing else at adding oxygen to the water! Bio Balls do a very nice job at breaking down streams of water to drops of water. All of those drops of water have tons of oxygen grabbing surface area with their surface tension being continually broken down by the mechanical action of the bio balls! So instead of your canister filters sucking oxygen out of the water to feed the beneficial bacteria you are adding huge amounts of oxygen to the water at the point where the bacteria consume it leaving very oxygen rich water to return to the tank.

The oxygenation ability of a wet/dry sump is the overwhelming reason to implement one on any size tank... in my opinion. Surface agitation then becomes a complete non issue... in comparison to a wet/dry sump it adds so little oxygen to the water that it just doesn't matter at all how much surface agitation you have.

P.S. I always put air stones under the bio ball chamber of my sumps to keep a constant supply of fresh air in the bio ball chamber. Oh yeah... a sump also gets those ugly heaters out of your tank too!
 
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