Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions Aeration

RC,

Hear is a little longer explanation.

I'll start with your last question first. Your water needs to travel about 24 inches through the air on a standard day to have O2 saturation due to contact with air. If the day is not a standard day, it can take up to 28 inches of travel through the air to saturate. That travel does not need to be straight up. Sideways requires less energy and will expose your water to a larger volume of air during its travels.

The water that traveled through the air is going to loose some of its heat (heat of vaporization) and will be a little heavier than the water on top. So, some of that water is going to sink to some degree. Also, the prop is displacing surface water so other water must be drawn up to replace it. That water will go through the same process. And so on and so on.

With my testing I have found in my Topias (1/10 acre ponds) I can turn the entire pond over in about 30 minutes using a 1/4 HP DC surface aerator and will have homogenized temperature and O2 readings in less than 40 minutes. My Topias will have O2 reading over 5ppm on the bottom for more than 12 hours after running the surface aerator.

One of the biggest reasons for using a surface aerator is because fish will gravitate to the surface when O2 is low (piping action of the fish) and surface aerators add a lot of O2 to the surface quickly which saves fish. This is the emergency benefit of surface aerators.

Being very shallow, the Topias are going to be mixed top to bottom with a surface aerator, But if I tried this in the big pond, the bottom water would never be mixed using a surface aerator, the water is just too deep and the benefits of O2 would only be found in the top layer. Thus a bottom diffused system is a must in the big pond if I want to bring O2 saturated water to the bottom layers for the benefits of aerobic bacteria decomposing the muck, and opening up more water to my fish for habitat, but this will be a slower process.

Each system has its roll to play. Need O2 fast, use surface aeration. Want to destratify and bring healthier water to the depths, use bottom diffused aeration. Want to get lucky that night because the wife like the new pretty water works, get a fountain.

I have used both bottom and surface aeration and had great success. Fountains not required so far!!

I get that I am unconventional, but I also can back up my results with factual data.

Hope this helps. if not, ask more questions and either I or one of the experts will try to give a better explanation.