Pond air pump

Pond Air Pumps inject air into ponds, to increase water quality. A pond that is lacking in oxygen will have poor water quality and a reduced fish health. This is of a greater importance in a koi pond as they produce more waste and need more bacterial filtartion.
Why air pumps are vital in pond filtration
All garden ponds that are stocked with fish should have an air pump. In all pond filters there will be some form of biomedia (Flocor, Japanese Matting, Kaldness k1 or k3, or lava rock, etc) this is where all biological filtraion happens. The bacteria that are housed within a filter are there to keep a pond healthy and fish disease-free, forming a nitrogen cycle. The bacteria within a water filter remove ammonia from the pond water, these bacteria use a lot of oxygen in the process so without sufficient oxygen the bacteria will struggle to thrive.
Oxygen is required by fish and plants. A pond that has insufficient levels of oxygen will barely be able to support any life and will soon stagnate, leaving it green and full of sludge.
Oxygen can dissolve itself into water wherever it comes into contact with air, this mainly happens on the surface of the pond, as the water is always in contact with air. In realistic terms this means the bigger surface area of the pond, the more water is going to connect with air and this will allow more dissolved oxygen to enrich the pond.
In any size of pond you can increase the oxygen levels, ponds stocked with fish, especially if they are koi, orfe or sturgeon. The best way of introducing more air into a pond is through surface movement, an air pump directly adds oxygen and creates surface circulating movements.
How does an air pump work?
Air pumps are designed to push air through air stones or manifolds. These are submerged under water, which in turn allows the air stones introduce hundreds of small bubbles into the pond, each of these then releases oxygen into the pond water helping to support and maintain the ponds natural ecosystem. The smaller the bubbles produced by the air stone, the greater the surface area will be and therefore the more oxygen available in the pond.
During the summer months of the year dissolved oxygen is always less concentrated. This is because warmer water is unable to harbour as much oxygen as a cooler pond. Combine this with the higher metabolism rates of your fish, will be putting a big strain onto the filters bacteria. This could lead to the pond having aeration problems and water quality problems, to rectify the problem please read below;
How to spot a lack of oxygen in a pond
The most tell tale sign of a pond suffering from oxygen depletion is fish gasping at the waters surface, or around the waterfall. Really just any where where water is being circulated into the pond. This is more noticeable on summers mornings, the oxygen will have been used by plants throughout the night therefore this has led to the oxygen supply within the pond being strangled.
Within the summer months, fish become more active and will always be looking for food, with the increase in their appetites you will find that they produce more waste. If this is a sudden jump from what the filter was capable of dealing with the pond will suffer an ammonia spike. This will make the fish gasp at the waters surface and need to be dealt with immediately by doing water changes.
Thunderstorm
A thunderstorm in the summer is one of the most common but unknown about causes of fish deaths in a pond. A thunderstorm can reduce the amount, it's known as pond stratification. Over time a pond will develop different levels of water, colder water can hold more dissolved oxygen. So in the summer months your pond has less oxygen in the layers of water than normal. A thunderstorm will will disrupt all the levels in a pond and will cause a de-stratification process taken all the oxygen from a pond.

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