Silent air pump

Performance & sizing

Core numbers for matching this unit to your tank and electrical plan.

Power

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Flow rate

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Noise

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Dimensions

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Price range

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Tank fit (L)

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Consumables & maintenance

Rinse mechanical media on a regular schedule; replace biomedia and cartridges per the manufacturer (often many months apart).

Description

An air pump earns its place in three situations that have nothing to do with decoration, and the Merck Veterinary Manual names all of them. The first is the hospital or quarantine tank. Merck's home quarantine setup is a ten gallon tank with a sponge filter, a heater and a small aeration pump, and its equipment list for a veterinary practice treating fish is much the same at a larger scale: a few 10 or 20 gallon tanks with simple foam filters and aeration pumps. A sponge filter has no motor of its own. The air pump is the filter rather than an accessory to it. The second is treatment. Formalin is one of the few parasiticides with FDA approval behind it, and the instruction Merck prints alongside the dose is that vigorous aeration during formalin treatment is essential. That is worth knowing before an outbreak rather than during one. The third is transport. Merck describes moving a live fish in a cooler with a battery-powered aerator, and keeping one on hand for an anaesthetised fish being carried between rooms. Now the part of the name with nothing behind it. Silent is a marketing word rather than a measured one. No reference work found here publishes noise figures for aquarium air pumps, and this catalog has not tested any, so there is no decibel claim on this page. What can be said without a source is mechanical and fairly obvious: a pump standing directly on a hard shelf transmits its vibration into the shelf, and the mat underneath it usually does more for the noise in the room than the model name printed on the box.

Sources

• merckvetmanual.com — https://www.merckvetmanual.com/exotic-and-laboratory-animals/aquarium-fish/management-of-aquarium-fish
• merckvetmanual.com — https://www.merckvetmanual.com/exotic-and-laboratory-animals/aquarium-fish/overview-of-aquarium-fish

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