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mellow

Trying to decide if we should get a Supercharger or a Blower to help aerate fish tanks. What are the pros and cons of either machine? Saw a couple of superchargers, they seem to work well. But I also heard that blowers are very dependable and easier to hook up, and that the final cost is about the same. What has been your experience with either of these set ups.

Carnwadrick

Recently looked at a couple of commercial Koi farms in the desert of california, ponds were 2 to 5 acres and they were simply being aerated with fountains spraying water on to the ponds, this served the purpose of replacing water lost from evaporation as well as aeration. the largest farm had as many as five thousand adult fish so the system must be working

tsicar

this system will be far more efficient and far cheaper than running a blower and airstones.
the only way you can oxygenate water efficiently is to disturb the surface, and the airstones do the same thing: none of the bubbles or very few will dissolve in the water, only the small disturbance they create when they burst on the surface will oxygenate, so a spray or paddlewheel system is far better.
the spray has the added benefit of vastly increasing the surface area of the volume of water, so oxygenates even more.

you could use the supercharger in an airlift situation, to raise your water to the filter, eliminating the need for a waterpump, and this would oxygenate, plus save on electricity, but forget the silly airstone thing, you are just wasting your money.

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DrAndy

Chiang Mai use fountains to aereate the moats, which works well

and looks nice too

they have small floating platforms with the fountains mounted on

tsicar

by areating the water, suspended particles and algae actually provide surface area for aerobic bacteria.
the fountain adds the necessary oxygen which makes it work as a biofilter, so the nasty nitrites get chomped at the same time as supplying oxygen for the fish.
i once met a hatchery "expert" at dalton's place who was shocked (and i could see that he did not believe me), when i told him that i did not use oxygen cylinders or tubes to oxygenate my catfish fry at all (stocking density around 200000fry in a 250litre tank)
all it took was a very small fishtank pump connected to a spraybar above the shallow tank, disturbing the surface, to provide all the oxygen needs.
(catfish can live in a zero oxygen environment after about 30 days, but the fry need plenty of oxygen.)

mellow

I have 3 bio filters which will help aerate the water, along with quite a few air intake pipes along the water distribution pipes which leed to the tanks. I want to add extra air to each tank. We have 51 one cubic meter tanks. A paddle wheel for each is out of the question, as are 51 spray bars.