You’ve got algae on your pond—or maybe you have nasty pond odors wafting into your house and mosquitos taking over your yard—and the solution you keep running into time and time again in your research is something called aeration.

But what is aeration? What does it do for your pond? How do you aerate a pond? These are all good questions, the answers to which escape most pond owners.

In order to help the average pond owner understand aeration a little bit better, we’ve put together a crash course:

What is pond aeration?

Pond aeration is a process by which oxygen is added to water, effectively raising the level of dissolved oxygen.  This dissolved oxygen is what fish use to breathe, and what other organisms use to keep your pond clean.

Two things are crucial in this process: aeration efficiency & mixing action.

High efficiency ensures that you’re imparting the most water at the lowest energy cost (basically getting the most bang for your buck), and the mixing action make certain that this highly oxygenated water is spread throughout your entire pond.

What does pond aeration do for me?

Aeration is integral to maintaining the appearance and aquatic health of your pond. The Mixing and Aerating actions perform four key roles:

1.  Reduce algae and clarify water by providing oxygen for beneficial bacteria to breathe—when these bacteria thrive, they rapidly consume the nutrient material in your pond that would otherwise fuel algae blooms and cloudy water.

Algae is also reduced through mixing. The mixing action both creates a turbulence that disrupts the algae habitat and circulates oxygen throughout the entire water column, allowing the safe bacteria to outcompete algae for food pond-wide.

2.  Get rid of pond odors by facilitating oxygen breathing, or aerobic, bacteria growth. When bacteria break down nutrients without oxygen, they release horrible pond odors!

Aerobic bacteria actually breakdown nasty pond odors before they reach the surface, keeping your pond smelling fresh.

3.  Provide fish the ideal habitat with aeration by ensuring that they have ample oxygen throughout the pond to breathe.

Fish health is also improved by the mixing action, as this destratifies the water column and avoids pond turnover (a twice-a-year phenomenon that sometimes causes the death of all your fish!)

4.  Limit mosquito breeding by mixing up the stagnant water they thrive in. What’s more, the oxygenating abilities of good aerators expand the fish habitat, allowing them to travel into shallow water and eat up the nuisance mosquito larvae.

What types of Pond Aerators are there?

On- Surface Aerators

Fountains: Pond fountains claim to aerate by launching water into the air. While this may look nice, it is relatively poor at adding oxygen to the water and costs a huge amount of money in electricity costs.

At the same time, fountains are unable to adequately mix lower levels of the pond. Between its poor aerating ability, its inefficient operation, and sub-standard mixing, fountains are a bad aeration choice.

Surface  Aerators: Surface aerators work in a fashion similar to that of fountains, except for they don’t offer a visually appealing spray pattern. So, not only is a surface aerator a bad, inefficient aerator—it looks ugly to boot!

Subsurface Aerators

Standard Diffused Aerator: Standard diffused aerators sit at the bottom of your pond, and are powered by a compressor onshore.

They release fine (tiny) bubbles at the bottom of the pond, which is fantastic at adding oxygen to your pond, but lacking in mixing—this is because the microbubbles rise too slowly to create a sufficient mixing action.

Windmill Diffused Aerator: Windmill aeration works exactly like standard diffused aeration except for one part—it uses a windmill instead of a compressor to push air.

Not only is the performance of this unpredictable because of the inconsistency of the wind, it also produces very small quantities of air (not nearly enough to oxygenate your entire pond!).

MARS Double Bubble™ Aerators: The MARS works just like a standard diffused aerator with a compressor onshore and a fine bubble diffuser on the bottom—gaining excellent oxygen transfer.

The advantage of the MARS is in its Double Bubble™ Technology, which combines both fine bubble efficiency with a component designed specifically for superior mixing ability: the coarse bubble static tube aerator.

This patented, synergistic combination allows the MARS to Mix & Aerate your entire pond, making it the most effective and efficient aerator on the market today.

For more information on the MARS Aeration system, visit our home page and watch the video on Eco-Friendly Aeration.

There is a certain amount of ‘buzz’ whirling around the internet about windmill aeration—there are dozens of sellers pushing their own unique twist, all vying for consumer’s attention using the badge of eco-friendly aeration.

But what is really going on here? Do windmills live up to their seller’s hype? In this article, we will analyze the pros and cons of aeration windmills to see how they stack up.

Installation

Pros:

There aren’t any, unless you really enjoyed Erector Sets when you were young.

Cons:

The windmill aerators come disassembled, and require a substantial amount of time and energy to erect. Such assembly projects are rarely as easy as they seem.  Many of these windmills also require you to pour a concrete base, which adds to the difficulty. Expect a multi-day project.

With every windmill, you must also install a submerged aeration unit, largely without direction. The effectiveness of each diffuser depends on relatively specific placement—and these companies often leave you to figure this out on your own.

Operation

Pros:

Once purchased and installed, windmills have no operating cost.

Cons:

While ‘cheap’ to operate, windmills provide the customer with a minimal amount of aeration—requiring a minimum wind speed of 3-10 miles per hour just to begin operation.

Even on the absolute windiest of days, windmills max out at 2-4 cubic feet of air (cfm) output. On a normal day, if it is running at all, it would average between 1-2cfm pumped into the pond—which is less than sufficient.

Windmills are absolutely reliant on the wind, so inconsistent performance can be expected, and even in best case scenarios your pond will be under aerated.

Pond Treatment

Pros:

Windmill Aeration adds a little bit of air to your pond, more than would be imparted if no aeration was used.

Cons:

We’ve already established that the amount of air produced by windmills is both inconsistent and insufficient for adequate pond aeration.

When it is actually working, a pump rate average of only 1-2cfm is not adequate to aerate & mix, both of which are integral to reducing algae and keeping the pond water fresh. When aeration is low, the mixing is even lower.  Even at top speed, a windmill’s fine bubbles rise too slowly to thoroughly mix the water.

Windmill aerators will also operate less (or not at all)at night, as the windspeed is generally much lower at this time.

Unfortunately, ponds have the lowest levels of dissolved oxygen at night—so windmill aerators often do not aerate your pond when it needs it most.  This can lead to stressed fish and significantly diminished pond treatment, raising the potential for algae to proliferate.

The Verdict

The age-old adage of “you get what you pay for” appears to ring true in the case of windmills—you do get an aerator, albeit one with little ability to treat your pond the way you intended.

When purchasing windmill aerators, it seems that customers would be losing sight of what they are trying to achieve with their pond. Sure there is a low operating cost, but you’d be spending thousands of dollars to under treat your water with a lousy, tough-to-install product.

The windmill vendors love to say they’re ‘green,’ but that’s hardly the case unless they are talking about the ‘green’ you would be spend on a product that doesn’t get the job done.

What’s more, many windmill customers actually end up using chemicals to supplement their pond treatment—costing more money and ruining the environment.

Alternative

For an eco-friendly aerator that actually gets treats your pond properly, check out the MARS Pond Aerator. It leaves your pondwater healthy, aerated, and fresh, minimizes algae, and prevents odors and fish kills.