oxygenation with flowforms

[polypus]

you guys ever see/try flowforms for oxygenation.
they might be a good fit with for aquaponics.

here's a video, there's lots of others online:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAHKvZhuDlQ

_c

[badflash]

Neat to watch, but very wasteful energy wise. Airstones work far better and does just jetting the water into the tank.

[polypus]

Neat to watch, but very wasteful energy wise.

not if you are just using gravity flowing out of the
grow bed back into the fish tank.

Airstones work far better and does just jetting the water into the tank.

just curious if you have hard oxygenation figures or experience
with both airstones and flowforms for a comparison?
i ask because i don't have either.

i just searched aquaponicshq and came up with this:

http://www.aquaponicshq.com/forums/show ... =flowforms

looks like gary from microponics thinks they are a good idea.
that post is from 2007, i wonder how well he has made out with them.

[jackalope]

I think it sounds/looks like a good idea, especially if you were using them in a gravity situation as you proposed ..... I didn't look into where a person might get them or what the prices are (maybe you can post a link for us), but it surely adds a lot of oxy to the water, I'm impressed! That said, I would think that they would lose a lot more to evaporation , so you would have to be adding water all the time ...... since you are using a pump to get the water to the growbeds, I don't see any additional expense in energy this way (gravity fed), but having to constantly add water would be my problem with it. One other thought is, if it were gravity fed, I don't think the water would be quite as vigorously stirred, therefore, possibly the airstones would cancel out any advantage of the flowforms ...... I guess you'd have to test it to make sure
Right now I'm adding 10-15 gallons a week with my siphon system in a 50 gallon rubbermaid FT and a 5-10 gallon "growbed" which has nothing but a couple of tomato plants and some small Guppies that managed to get pumped up there as fry. I have to drive 65 miles to get decent water as it is, so I don't think this system would work for me, but I'd like to see what others have as input for this type of aeration before I close the door to something like this. Thanks for the vid

[badflash]

I'm confused. You have to pump it up to the growbeds. When it returns you can jet it into the sump and oxygenate the water. Those things take up a lot of space. A 20 watt air pump/stone will provide more O2.