Quote:
Originally Posted by Coasting
I have 4 or 5 battery powered air pumps actually, but none of them plug in.
Where do you find one that plugs in and runs off battery?
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Search the net for Penn Plax Silent Air B11. It is a low cost Auto On Battery Powered Air Pump.
J&L have this version in stock, looks like an exact knock off:
http://www.jlaquatics.com/dry-goods/...-air-pump.html
I have 2 B11's on my 77 gallon sump-less tank, no UPS or any other sort of battery powered back up. One of these days I'll get around to building a battery backup for my VorTechs. Having never experience an outage here that lasts more than a few hours, I've become complacent in that regard.
Anyhow, with the penn-plax or aqua top, hook the flexible air tubing to a rigid line that will expel the air near the bottom of the tank when the pump senses an outage & switches on. The rigid air line is secured with a magnetic clip so it doesn't wander to the surface when air is on. Don't use an air stone. This set up creates larger bubbles that travel from the bottom adding O2 & creating at least a little bit water movement in the process.
There's actually another little gizmo you can build using rigid air tube & some pvc specifically designed to move water using an air pump. Don't recall the terminology at the moment, but it's essentially a pvc elbow at the top of a short piece of straight pvc tube. The straight tube is cut at an angle at the bottom & a hole to accommodate a length small diameter rigid air tube is drilled into the top of the elbow. The air tube is pushed through the hole in the elbow to just above where the angle cut starts on the straight piece. The assembly is attached to the side of the tank with the opening of the elbow half in & half out of the water. When air is pumped through the air line, it creates upward turbulence in the pvc tube which is transformed into water movement at the elbow opening. Would probably be the bees knees for your gold fish or any small tank, breeding tank etc. Just enough water movement, no splashing etc. I have some photos of this rig & built a couple, but have no small tanks atm so they're just lying around gathering dust. I'll post up a photo when I find it.