I'm forever blowing bubbles.....

[Cheese Specialist]

I also have one of "wrong" air features in the 30, a very nice rum drinking skeleton that we call Cpt. Jack Sparrow.

I am sure he is utterly gorgeous!

 

[Phantom Thief]

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but could i ask what bubble walls are for? I personally dont have one. Is it an important thing?

Thanks!
P.T.

 

[Cheese Specialist]

They are used to help oxygenate the water through surface aggitation, they are also good for tanks with fish that like a lot of current, like my hillstream loaches. Aesthetics is also a reason. For me, with externally filtered tanks, I don't think it's good for there to be no surface movement and I have a stone in the 320l for that reason.

 

[sunflower]

If my boyf had his way, we'd have a tank full of bubbles! As it is I've restricted him to one air stone through an external pump.

 

[rvm]

I have a 40" air curtain in one tank, that looks really quite effective. it runs along the back of the tank behind the palnts. and in the other I have just one small airstone.
I use them both for asthetics, and for practical reasons. Like everyone has said, agitation of the surface creates a bigger surface are for oxygen exchange, and thats gotta be a good thing right??!!!!

 

[pandapops001]

my tank is 36" in length, and i have one 6" airstone in the middle at the back,
would it be too much to add another 6" next to it??

I only added the airstone 2 days ago and my fish are really loving it, they keep swimming in the current up and down the water stream, its the best thing that i've added, and my fish are now spending much less time at the top of the tank,

So far i've not seen any features which i think look good, however i havent seen that many, but the ones i have seen looked a little too plasticy and flourescently coloured (not my taste), although i'm not offending anybody who has these

 

[csr mel]

you could get a model car and stick the airline so that bubbles come out the exhaust of the car.
or do that with a model jet so bubbles some out the exhausts.

maybe that wouldnt be as tacky as a treasure chest.

 

[amazingbioloboydp]

seems tacky to me.

 

[Fawke]

Yea, for me personally i dont like air features (IE Dodgy divers or chests blowing bubbles), tacky comes to mind.....
Perfect in the right tank im sure, just not for me.....

I have a 2.5 foot bubble wall in mine! looks good.....

 

[parker313]

I have a bubble wall in one tank but nothing in the other. I like the way they look!

 

[NinjaSmurf]

We used to have one in every tank I ever had as a kid, but now that I'm older I can't use them, all the pumps broke, and it's a pain trying to hide the tubing when you don't have plants. Though the one in my older brothers tank kept the worms he tried to feed his shovelnose catfish alive for six months (amazing little wormies...)

 

[MollyPlatyLuvr]

I've got an air wall. My mollies and platies love to play in the bubbles. My daughter had one of those goofy bubbly treasure chests in her 2 gallon betta tank (not that he needed it, but she's FIVE!) until she broke it. It even had a diver attached to a chain. *shudder*

A question ... to bubble with live plants, or not to bubble with live plants? I've been told that I should only run the bubble wall at night, when the aquarium light is off, because I've got live plants in there. But when I tried that one day, my fish all got lethargic, like they weren't getting enough oxygen. As soon as the bubble wall went back on, they went back to normal behaviour.

I'd rather have healthy fish than big huge plants, I guess.

 

[Teelie]

Bubble walls and planted tanks I've always heard is bad and I can see why as it basically starves the plants of CO2. I've debated plugging a bubble wall back into my Gourami tank with plants but so far haven't gotten around to trying it out.

 

[TorPeteO]

Is the only purpose for air stones and such to agitate the surface, oxygenating the water? For a while I thought they did it directly, rather than by stirring the surface. If the prior is the case, then I guess I don't need one because my filter stirs up the surface well enough.

I don't have anything, by the way.

Oh, and I think water features (treasure chests, scuba divers, drinkin' pirates, et al) are tacky. I like tanks au naturel.

 

[smithrc]

I have no air 'features' in any of our tanks... only venturi on 2 of them...

I only use an airpump for thr brine shrimp hatchery