Oxygen/air Pumps!

[Wendy-Jane]

Hi all,

I'm hoping you experienced people can advise me on whether my finny friends need an air pump in their tank.

My current set up is five ickle female bettas in a 37L tank. They have a heater and filter, and I do a 25% water change each week. So my question is, does that give them enough oxygen in the water, or should they also have an air pump? The reason I have not put one in so far is that there is already some currents in the tank because of the filter, and I don't want to make more so they have trouble swimming or resting They don't hang about under the surface of the water or anything, but I would appreciate thoughts on this. Do most people have air pumps in their betta tanks or not?

Thank you for any advice you can give- I just want my little girlies to be happy

 

[LauraFrog]

Adding an air pump to a tank does not really increase the oxygen. Oxygen is dissolved into the water from surface area touching the air, so the time the bubbles spend in the water would not really be doing anything. An air pump is usually used for creating features like bubble walls - since the advent of good filtration, they are more decorative features than fishkeeping necessities, especially since bettas are labyrinth fish and they can breathe a bit of oxygen from the air as well. So it's not necessary, but it wouldn't do any harm if positioned in a corner. I might mention though, air pumps are usually noisy so if yours is inside, it might be a little irritating.