DWC...How much air is too much air?

Ok, I only know one end of this spectrum. I blast my plants with air. I run 3 60+ gallon dual whisper air pumps. 6 12 inch air stones in a 18 gallon dwc. If I thought it would benefit, I would put another 3 on it or buy one of those commercial deals. Is this overkill, or can you overkill? Is more actually better?

no such thing as too much, however, some say that after a certain amount (i don't have figures) it's just wasted electricity, as only so much air can be dissolved in water...

however, if you're growing dwc and utilizing the aero aspect of the bubbles, the more the merrier!

love, kp

3 60+ gallon pumps? IYO, 2 much?

I have 3 of those. The larger one on the right.

maybe if you hooked up a jet turbine, that might be too much. i think you're safe for now

Let's talk dissolved oxygen then. I've noticed different air stones create different sized bubbles. My assumption would be since the objective then is to get dissolved oxygen, the smaller the bubbles the better. Right now I have 2 different kind of air stones in there. The straight up blue ones make larger bubbles then the green and blue ones I have. Now I've heard about curtains, but am unfamiliar with what they are. Is there anything better to use than airstones?

JohnnyPotSeed1969 said:

maybe if you hooked up a jet turbine, that might be too much. i think you're safe for now

Click to expand...

Where do you think i can get jet turbines at? You think ebay has them?

SmokerE said:

Let's talk dissolved oxygen then. I've noticed different air stones create different sized bubbles. My assumption would be since the objective then is to get dissolved oxygen, the smaller the bubbles the better. Right now I have 2 different kind of air stones in there. The straight up blue ones make larger bubbles then the green and blue ones I have. Now I've heard about curtains, but am unfamiliar with what they are. Is there anything better to use than airstones?

Click to expand...

In my reef tank I have a skimmer that runs a limewood airstone for the exact reasons mentioned; smaller bubbles, more dissolved oxygen, inrceased waste collection. HUGE improvement over any other airstone I have seen in my 20 plus years as a fishkeeper. I was going to post a question regarding their usefullness in a dwc. I would be worried about their decay or contamination, but then again they are safe in a reef tank which is supposed to be as clean as possible.

The more modern style of skimmers use a needle wheel or similar apparatus which spins to generate a dense bubble field without the use of an air pump. Anybody ever experiment with these?

SmokerE said:

Where do you think i can get jet turbines at? You think ebay has them?

Click to expand...

you can find anything on ebay

i'd like to see a pic of this thing you are referring to. Skimmer?

OK, here's a link to a very basic air-driven skimmer, much like what I use:
Saline Solutions Hooked On Protein Skimmer 30 at Big Al's Online

and here's a pic of a venturi driven, in-sump unit that shows the bubble-saturated water column rising to the collection cup.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/wmckenzie/pics/sump/sump02.jpg

The reef-geeks are a dedicated and innovative group who are constantly DIY'ing a better marine system. Lots of info online, this was just a quick google, I'll look around for more.

I wonder if these types of air systems have been used in hydroponics before. As long as they don't create bacteria build up, and they are easy to clean out, I don't see why they should not be used...Hmm

Well, there really wouldn't be any cleaning because you wouldn't be using the whole protein skimmer, unless you wanted to remove all your nutrients. If you were to use the limewood airstones or venturi / needle wheel drive to just create bubbles there would be virtually no maintenance.

Been thinking about asking if anyone here kept fish, so many parallels with lights and air!

i have the same one.. i dont think they use much electricity

you got a home made dwc system or did you purchase one?

IMHO the air curtains are alot better than the stones for DWCs. i used the 6" and 12" blue air stones from walmart and after a while (a few months) they stopped up so much that the bubbles where huge and just coming out of 1 end of the stone. with the curtains ive never had any probs with them stopping up at all. they put out mostly small bubbles, and can be cut to fit just about any res.
also,,, i had a 20 gallon bubbler with 6 plants when i first started growing hydro. at first i used 2x24" air stones. then i used 4x24" cuz i thought more was better. the tote with 4 stones didnt do any better at all than the tote with 2. when it comes to air stones, i think its more about placement than anything else. as long as you have enough stones that the bubbles get up into the root system your gold. i also noticed a huge jump in growth when i dropped my res temp from 80 to 65. cooler water holds much more o2.

now i use just 4x24" air curtains per 50 gallon DWC. and 2 of the pumps exactly like your useing. i had 6x24"air curtains with 3 pumps, but didnt really see that it did any good. hope this helps

Do you have a picture of these curtains?

Do you have a picture of these curtains?

Ditto on that question...

This is what came up as the first result in a Google image search "aquarium air curtain".

If I am seeing this right, then a curtain is a hose with very small holes in it..Corrrect?