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Oxygen
Oxygen is essential for almost all living animals. Certainly in fish in tanks and for living planted aquariums, adding oxygen is a very good idea.
Oxygen in planted aquaria
Low dissolved oxygen can be a potential problem overnight in planted aquariums. Plants use CO2 during the light hours of the day to produce oxygen. During the dark hours they do the exact opposite and use oxygen to produce CO2. Because low dissolved oxygen in aquariums can kill fish, it is best to run an OxyMax air pump to avoid this problem.
Other uses for air pumps
Always increase oxygenation when using any disease treatment. Some treatments like anti parasite or anti fungal chemicals require that you up the oxygen level in the tank whilst using them. As mentioned earlier, low dissolved oxygen can be a real problem for fish, so bear this in mind if you ever need to add treatment to your tank.
OxyMax air pumps can also be used to run sponge filters. These are often used to grow fish fry or for very tiny fish or shrimp. Sponge filters can also be used in quarantine tanks.
To re-oxygenate if your water is too hot. If you have a situation where the water accidently overheats, you will need to add oxygen back into the water as soon as possible (if you are not already using an air pump). This can sometimes happen on the few very hot summer days that we get every year in the UK. When water heats up, the amount of oxygen that it holds decreases.
Marine tanks and oxygen
OxyMax air pumps are suitable for use with a marine tank. However, in a marine tank, you may not normally need an air pump. This entirely depends on your set up. If you have a good quality protein skimmer running, this may well be enough to oxygenate your aquarium. In some cases a lot of surface flow can also be enough. You may still want to have an air pump to hand though in case you ever need to add marine disease treatment or in case your tank ever overheats.
Air accessories
If you have an air pump already, you might want to have a look at the air pump accessories that we stock.
Happy fishkeeping!