air pump question

banzaibaz

Hi
i was in an aquarium buying a spare heater,the guy behind the counter was telling a customer about overstocking and a way of helping his situation was to put an airstone/pump into his set up,
Is this true in anyway ????????????

Snappyarcher

To coin a phrase...... .... ummm sorry no its not!
How the hell does a air stone and the introduction of bubble make an over stocked aquarium bigger.....

AbbeysDad

There was a guy behind a counter in your aquarium??? lol

A pump/air stone facilitates the carbon dioxide/oxygen gas exchange rates (as the bubbles break the surface) providing more oxygen in the water. If one was only thinking about available oxygen relative to stock level, we could conclude that more oxygen would allow more fish. However, an appropriate stock level is dependent on numerous variables, with O2 only one of many.

newtchaplin

It adds more oxygen so more fish can breath better.

I had a 20 gallon with platys and they were all gasping for air up top, I had 40" of fish in a 20 gallon, I added a bubbler and they stopped gasping and started swimming around. Never had a problem since.

Byron

As AD pointed out, the benefit here is increasing oxygen. When fish are under any form of stress, one way it affects them is by raising their metabolism so they require more oxygen entering the bloodstream. When there are more fish in the aquarium than what it can easily support, oxygen in the water will be less, making it that much more difficult for the fish to get more of it. Adding an airstone increases the gas exchange bringing oxygen into the water and driving out CO2. So in this sense, the fish is helped--but minimally. The stress caused by the overcrowding will still be present, and stress weakens the fish continually.

You might find this helpful:
Stress and Freshwater Aquarium Fish

The main point is that overcrowding an aquarium causes trouble that will affect the fish and lead to disease and early demise, and there is absolutely no way to offset this except by correcting the stocking.

Byron.

1077

Only safe way to increase the number of fishes in closed system such as our aquarium's, is to increase the volume of water with larger tank or sump.

newtchaplin

You make a good point with the Co2, the tank that was overstocked all live plants died. So I made a Co2 out of a 2 litre bottle.