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We had one of those airstones that go the entire length of the tank, a 55gl. Anyway, I have AC filters and the bubbles going up into the filters was too much. Crap coming out and the noise. So, we took out the strip thing and replaced it with a decorative castle thing which has one large airstone. The fish seem to be doing ok with this change. Should I add another airstone or go back to the strip, or am I ok?

Barb

As long as you have some sort of service agitation you should be fine. I removed my bubble strip from my tank as well, and the fish never seemed to notice or care. I think you should be perfectly fine, but if you are nervous about just check on them every once in a while to make sure they are not gasping for air at the service.
HTH
Jen

You wrote that you have AC filters (plural). If you have more than one filter in there, odds are very good that you have very good surface agitation. I wouldn't worry too much.

Yes, have an ac 300 and ac 200. Have not seen any fish gasping. I was concerned as someone mentioned in another post about lots of oxygen in the tank. I was just wondering if I made a big mistake by removing the airstone strip.

Thanks!

Barb

As far as I can tell, there are only two ways to tell if there's enough oxygen. Either your fish tell you by gasping and/or showing stress, or you do an oxygen test. And oxygen tests are expensive and hard to get. You can run the airstone if you want, but you're probably already getting all the surface circulation you can expect through two filter outflows disturbing the surface.

Hi,
The key to know if your fish are lacking oxygen is to
look at their behaviour. If they are running along the
surface gulping air/water as some may do when actively
competing for floating food then they are trying to
get more air and you need to do something immediately.
We call this action "gasping" at the surface.

With the size of your tank, and the two filter returns
breaking the surface I doubt seriously that you need
to do anything further.

To get an example of fish behaviour that would illustrate
a tank with depleted oxygen, go to just about any LFS
that has a tank of feeder goldfish or guppies. Look at
that tank when their new shipment has arrived, see
that mass of fish crammed into a "small" tank and see
them gasping at the surface.

It's kinda hard for the average fishkeeper to get enough
fish in their tanks to consume that much oxygen.

With normal stocking levels you, in your situation, have
nothing to worry about.

Frank


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