Does anyone have experience with these Air Pumps?
Pond Aeration & Oxygenation: Aquatic Ecosystems DY-Series Air Pumps by Drs. Foster and Smith

I need a quiet pump that can aerate the rear-corner overflows of a 135g (24"h) tank. My objective is to place 18" bendable air diffusers at the bottom of each overflow and layer the overflow with thick mechanical pond filter sponges and or ceramic noodles to aid in dissolution.

I want MAX aeration .. like what you see when H2O2 comes in contact with bacteria only 10million times greater .... :-))

Only problem is that I sleep right next to my tank and the air pump comes on at night. Right now I have a Rena 400 it is quiet but I want maybe 4-5 time greater volume / psi..

I was thinking of the following pumps as I understand that Diaphram pumps are the quietest although not the best use in pressure demanding situations.

Anyone have opinions on High Volumne (greater than Rena 400) quiet air pumps ?

Pockets,

I don't know if I fully understand what you are wanting to achieve, but I will just say this and maybe it will help you in your planning/decisions.

There are quite a few air pumps (mainly for ponds) that can pump high volumes of air with almost no perceivable pump noise (<40dB aka quiet whisper volume levels). For pumping larger volumes of air like you are saying you want, the loudness of the air pump isn't going to be your greatest source of noise.

Running an airstone (especially as the air pressure levels go up in an attempt to increase the flow through a certain sized airstone or tube) is actually quite noisy just by itself even with the air pump in another room. Many pond airstones put out quite a lot of noise at the surface of the water from all the bubbles popping at one time.

I used to run a 12" airstone in my 75 tank with just enough flow to keep the whole length of airstone sending out a nice curtain of bubbles, and the noisy part wasn't the air pump it was the bubbles popping at the surface of the water and the slight "whistling?" sound that is generated from the bubbles squeezing through the pores of the airstone itself that transmits through the water within the tank and out through the tank glass. I could hear the bubbles popping like crazy and agitating the surface of the water from 20 feet away or more very easily. I couldn't even hear my large canister filter's circulation pump over the sound of the bubbles.

The only way to keep the bubbles relatively quiet is to keep them coming out of the airstones or air tubing in lower volumes and at lower pressures, and that doesn't sound like it will get you what you are looking to achieve.

I would say you might be stuck unless you don't mind the loud sound of lots of bubbles rising through water and popping/stirring/agitating the water surface.

If you are wanting to have the bubbles travel up through a filter media (like blue or white filter matting or even open celled foam for instance) that doesn't work very well. Pretty much anything more dense than bio-media (like bio-balls or ceramic rings) will just trap the air underneath it instead of letting the bubbles travel through it. The most dense thing that you could put in there might be something like the fluffy nylon bath sponges. Some people call them "bath puffs". Even that would most likely only work with very low bubble rates.

Have a good one, Jeremy

Hi Pockets,

I am not sure of your objective, but if it is to increase 02 in the water, how about a small powerhead on a timer that points at the surface for agitation?

This will be much less work and much quieter than using air, as Jeremy points out.

Plus, the powerhead can be used 24/7 if you want.

For instance, if you are using c02, you can use it during the c02 'on' time to help distribute flow in the tank, and not have it pointed at the surface during this time.

Also, overflows tend to have more 02 due to the waterfall effect and being exposed to air...

I have twin overflows on my 180 and am always looking to eliminate 02 (ha ha) as I am injecting c02.

Are your fish in distress at all? Are you injecting c02?

Hope this helps.

Thanks for great replies!


Sorry for the lack of clarity.

My objective is to utilize my 2 rear corner overflows as hidden oxygenating containers.

By pumping large volumes of bubbles from the bottom of the overflow into multiple layers of thick porous filter sponge and ceramic noodles.

The action of the bubbles being forcefully pushed in and out of the layers of sponge (2") > ceramic noodles (2")... etc ... etc.... while rising the 24" of depth to the top will aid in stripping the oxygen from the bubbles.

This has been made evident to me in my current experimenting by seeing the bubbles which if let rise without any obstruction have great force and pressure bursting at the top.

While in contrast, if the bubbles which demand to rise to the top are required to be pushed forcefully through a thick piece of the filter sponge have very little pressure, make little noise, and appear weak and only containing a fraction of O2 they had when left unobstructed to rise to the surface.

My real goal is to see all those darn bubbles pop under the water

[edit - below]

I also believe that once a bubble has been created and ejected from the air stone or diffuser that that same bubble if pushed through enough abrasive/coarse material that it will burst under the water. And, even though there will be bubbles visibly bursting at the surface many of the them once beginning the journey to the top will not make it and also will not stay trapped at the bottom or any other spot in the material due to the volume of bubbles constantly trying to push there way to the top.

Pockets,

So you are basically trying to make an "anti-trickle filter" for lack of a better word, in order to achieve the same end result as a trickle filter tries to achieve, would I be correct in that statement?

Instead of dripping tank water down through bio-media that is freely open to the air (like with a regular trickle filter) in order to oxygenate the water and also cultivate aerobic bacteria on the bio-media, you are wanting to bubble air up through water instead, sending it up through the bio-media and padding hoping to achieve the same end result of more aerobic bacteria and better oxygenated water, is that correct?

If you are wanting to do this in your tank overflow chambers, how does the water actually get heavily oxygenated? I am assuming that you have the type of overflow that has a weir wall surrounding a standpipe and the tank water falls over the weir wall into the overflow chamber and then falls from the chamber down the overflow pipe, is that correct?

If that is how you have it, I think that almost all of the water would just fall from the tank into the overflow chamber and then remain at the top of the overflow chamber before quickly falling down the overflow standpipe. It would never actually travel through your added setup that attempts to aerate the water before it falls down the standpipe. Does that make sense, or am I assuming something incorrectly?

Have a good one, Jeremy

No,

An "anti" trickle filter would be similar to a canister filter which are generally known be very low in the ability to provide the high demand of oxygen for the very bacteria that they are supposed to be good at accommodating.

I don't want a trickle filter running 24.7 because I inject CO2.

I want to degas CO2 and at the same time create as much O2 for 15h per day utilizing timer/air pump/rear corner overflows/materials.

I have 3 large Eheim canisters on my 135g (all bio media) and am not interested in more biological filtration. The purpose of the materials in the overflow are only for stripping the bubbles of their O2.

I am determined to create oxygen by utilizing a similar method already incorporated into my setup to degas CO2. Just with 10x greater air pump and dissolving the bubbles on there way to the surface.

--

Has anyone here owned an air pump from the manufactures listed in the link ?

Hakko Air Pump 40
Alita AL-40 Linear Air Pump - AquaCave
Pondmaster Air Pump 40