How Long Do You Aerate Your Water For?

[Funkoid]

I've read that the general consensus is 24 hours and I've been following this so far, with small changes though is it possible to aerate for less time and just make sure the SG and temp is right?

How long do you leave yours?

 

[woody88]

Sorry if I'm missing something but what exactly are you referring to mate?

 

[Chris_C]

I think he means how long do you run a powerhead in your fresh water before adding to tank .. not sure what is correct but i do 24 hours.. i have heard of many doing half as much and less

 

[Funkoid]

No probs, I've read a couple of methods of mixing your own salt water which I've pretty much followed to the second. I've been told a few times that you get your RO, put your salt in, then the heater and then leave a power head running to aerate the water for x amount of time?

 

[HappyGeorge]

I don't aerate as such I just drop the 1000lph powerhead in the bottom of the container with the salt and let it mix until I'm happy, normally 25 litres takes about 4-5 hours, after that I do not see any change in the salinity on a test, but I usually prep it one evening then the following morning before I go to work I chuck the powerhead on so it generally gets a lot more time than that but never 24 hours, just can't see how that would be necessary. To be honest I just look in the container and test, if the test matches the expected salinity for the volume of water/quantity of salt added, and there are no bits in the water then I add it.

I say there is no aeration because there is no air being pushed into it and the neck of the container and lack of surface agitation would not promote much if any aeration.

This is in no way aimed at you Funkoid but I do find myself questioning the whole process of mixing so carefully. We don't carefully scrape all the little bits of salt that are on the surfaces water have evaporated from and mix them back into the Ro when we do an evaporation top up do we?

So surely we must assume that if we are topping up with RO and the salinity isn't changing then we are collecting enough salt off of surfaces around the tank and sump to match the water added to the tank.

 

[StandbySetting]

There should be no need to additionally aerate an aquarium unless administering a medication or using some form of Epoxy resin to hold Live Rock together, aeration occurs naturally via diffusion, air diffuses into the water column, increasing the surface area of the water will increase the rate of diffusion and shift the equilibrium slightly, this normally happens anyway due to surface agitation that occurs from the circulation pumps.

 

[woody88]

12 hours normally. But have mixed salt water in an hour with a 1800 lph pump. It gets very well aerated. I also have a powerhead breaking the water surface in my tank.