Aeration - Part I

Oxygen is vital to the overall health of the system. The fish need it, the plants need it, and the beneficial bacteria need it. Here are a few ways I am using to aerate the pond. The best thing about these methods is that they are all free or extremely low cost. Or you can buy a pump and airstone at a minimum of $200 plus electricity for this size pond. The choice was simple for me...

Waterfalls and above ground water inlets
Two methods just happen to have the added benefit of aeration. Any type of water feature such as a waterfall and stream provide excellent aeration. The larger the better for this purpose.




Water inlets also provide some aeration.



Venturi and Sprinklers
A Venturi valve is another great way to get aeration. You have to have water pressure for this to work. I connected mine straight off the pump with a tee fitting. These are tricky to make so I won't go into the details here. I will have instructions on my other blog here. I added a sprinkler head on the same line for another method of aeration.




Here is a diagram of the way I did it.


Total cost of these four methods - about $2. The waterfall and inlets are part of the pond so I consider them free. The Venturi cost about $2 for the fittings and the sprinkler head I had lying around, so I consider that reuse and free.

I have a couple of other ways to oxygenate the water which I will show in my next post(Aeration - Part II).