Do I need an airstone or bubblewand for my goldfish tank?
Airpumps with an attached airstone or bubblewand aren’t a necessity and your goldfish can usually do perfectly fine without them but there are various advantages in having one in your setup.
In goldfish tanks airpumps are primarily used to drive airstones or bubble walls. These serve two purposes, primarily they provide oxygen to the tank by helping with gas exchange at the surface, secondary there is the aesthetic appeal of having a bubble wall or stream of bubbles in your tank.
Before I decided to concentrate on a Walstad tank I ran an air pump attached a bubble wand.
If you plan to run plants in your tank it’s important to note that an airstone or wand will encourage the release of co2 from your water which can potentially starve plants. Some people seem to be able to run an airstone alongside plants, I unfortunately never seemed to be able to get it to work.
A bubble wand is basically a strip of porous material which creates a wall of bubbles in the tank when air is passed through it. The effect was wonderful but I was having trouble sleeping at night with the noise of the bubble wall.
I switched the wall with some airstones and found it much more comfortable and I was still able to enjoy streams of bubbles in the tank. Airstones come in a variety of sizes, are considerably quieter then a bubble wand and should only set you back a couple of dollars.
They do clog after a while so every few months you can either replace them or take them out boil them for a bit in some water and then gently brush them with an old toothbrush.
Airpumps can be noisy so if you’re not buying online definately see if they’ll let you hear the pump first. I have an Aquaclear pump and on it’s lowest setting it is tolerable but if I had to buy another one i’d probably get something quieter.
One way around an annoying pump is to run extra long air lines and place the pump out of sight in another room in a foam box or something similar. Be careful not to place it in a completely airtight container though as obviously these pumps need to be able to suck air to work.
Ideally you want the pump to be situated above the tank water level so that if the power cuts or the pump malfunctions water will not syphon back into the airline and wind up destroying the unit or leaking all over your floor.
You can buy check valves to stop this happening for $1 or so. A checkvalve is just a one way valve which stops water backflow in the case of pump failure or a blackout.
I always had trouble with the idea that the only thing stopping lounge room from becoming a swimming pool was a 75cent bit of plastic so I ran my pump above the tank.
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