Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions Quick aerator help please

red to white and white to red, Now try not to kill your fish with initial over circulation as you have a "lot" of lift !! !! Glad your up and run'n

Ted I erased those emails from you on start up schedule, also on how I should open my valves.. I know you said something about making the boils match, but they all look pretty close to me??? Also I was running it with all valves wide open and still not reading anything on my gauge.. Tomorrow I will have time to get out their and really fine tune it, hopefully I can find some people to answer some question

Hope the compressor is O.K. Glad that you got it figured out quickly!

Also I really wanna thank everyone for your help and input.. You guys really came together to help me with lots of ideas and suggestions. This is prolly one of the best threads I've ever got help on.

Sincerely thanks

BGK

Make sure your gauge is "vented" at the liq fill point, liquid guages must be vented unless they are designed to be "pre" vented by the manufacturer. On valving open all 3 as you have done and you should have a more aggressive boil on the shallowest one or two, you may have to look very close to see it but it should be there. Then throttle that one or two back to even the boil out. Every 2-3 months flex (burp) the discs by having two valves wide open and closing one.Do this for a minute on each. Alternate thru the valve bank to flex all 3 stations. Most discs are advertised as "self cleaning" but none really are but this is as easy to clean as it gets. should take 2-3 minutes to clean all 3 stations.Startup in mid summer with the huge pump you have is a good question> Try this-- run 1 hour today and increase an hour each day to you get to 4 hours and then hold for 3-4 days at 4 hour then add 2 hour to 6 for a few days then 8 for a few then to 12.Are you trying to get to 12 hr total run time as I dont recall?If this is too fast of a startup and you get some "floaters" shut system down for a day and go back to the previous lesser runtime and restart.Just watch your fish as they will let you know if all is not well.Piping, slow movement,off feed etc. Your startup is a real unknown as the lift with that pump makes it a potential challange this time of year, Good Luck, gotta run back later today !!

Does it matter that my shallowest diffusers are on the longest run (300').. I guess I'll have to get out on a boat to really check the boils and I'll mark the valves or reference..
Thanks Ted

Also when I run it with my valves all the way open I'm still not get any reading on my gauge.. I've tested the gauge on my compressor and they work fine.. What am I missing here?

Shallowest by less than a foot of your next deepest station will not off set 300 ft of tube.Try closing one valve and see what your reading does. Not sure how but perhaps boring out the factory .375 exhaust is a factor? Didnt you enlarge the intake and exhaust?Be sure the pop off valve has little to no air escaping. Is your gauge vented?

I plugged the pop off. Alos i did bore out the intake and exhause on the compressors head(?) I think i enlarged them to 1/2" or 5/8" cant remember so i could directly tap the fittings in.. My gauge is vented i bled them off according to directions when they came. I also cracked them open after you mentioned this and liguid came out immediately (Like i think its suppose to otherwise itd bleed out air??) Im going to get some more electrical stuff ill be back on later for more help

Ok absolutely everything is done.. I'm running with all my valves wide open holding steady at 2 psi.. What's your final thoughts???

Im still suspect of your liq gauge, the venting would only be the air space inside the gauge from the liq to the vent which is normally on top. Often its a black rubber plug that needs to be pin punched. Most liq filled gauges will have a small decal for venting instructions. Some have a stainless pin installed into the plug which slides up and down with pressure. Either way the lower the pressure the better on all aeration pumps but especially on a vane pump.At some point when the air is calm and you have a very light rain you will see the diffuser "area of influence" as I like to call it. You should see a difference in these surface rings if you cant see a difference within the boils. You have a tremendous amount of lift so may be difficult to see a boil difference.Your valves are probably set very close regardless.

I bought 3 gauges from the same guy as "air pressure gauges".. The first one i ruined by tightening it by hand by just grabbing the face and turning instead of using a wrench on the fitting on back.. I did exactly as the instructions on the decal said. I even installed the new gauge, it holds steady a 2 psi when i was switching the hose I plugged one with my thumb and it bumped up to 6-7 psi.. Wouldn't partially closing the valves cause the pressure to go up? And pressure going up is not good correct? So what am I missing? Don't I want low pressure? Seems to me I'm missing something here?

Also when I barely blow in he nipple with my compressor it reads just fine??

High Five BGK!!!!
Glad you got it figured out and are up and running. Take what Ted says about start up to heart. Having just went thru this I did end up with 5 floaters. 4 of the 5 were pretty far deteriorated so I'm not sure they were fresh but it did raise the question as to whether or not I was too aggressive. I worked up to 12 hour run time over an 11 day span I think. I am now running from 7PM to 7AM and have no new floaters for several days now. I'm going to hold at 12 hours right now to try and keep water temps down. There was a post about 24hr vs 12hr runs on here but for the life of me I cant remember where it was.

Also, since I was doing my increases at night, while I was working into my times I did fall asleep once and overshot my 1hr increase and turned it into a 3hr jump on accident. Save yourself from this by heading to a Lowes or Home Depot and pick up a timer. Mine was a dual plug timer that was like $15. Set the timer for current time and when you want it to turn off. It will do the start up and shut down for you. Now that I'm holding at 12hrs it kicks itself on and off all by itself. Not sure how your pump is wired up but it became pretty handy when I needed to shut my pump off in the middle of the night.

Found the link about the 12 vs 24 hr run times.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=266678#Post266678

Yeah I wired the timer in sunday (trust me 240volts.. Ain't $15 lol) I'm just gonna run 30 minutes until the weekend then up to an hour next week then 3 hrs a week then 6 then 9 then 12 stopping at 12 these will all be five day runs..

Also I'm getting the strongrotten smell I've read about.. Can someone gimme some details on that? What's causes? Effects?