Maintaining Your Fisheries Aeration

We prescribe some type of aeration in just about every project we work on. To keep a fishery healthy and growing you must have proper aeration. And if you do have aeration it must be maintained regularly. We have three tips that will help to keep your aeration in your fishery running smoothly for many years.

Check your compressors and gauges:

Every time you open up the box, check the gauges and mark it down every month. If there's a change in the gauge on pressure, there can be a variety of different issues going on inside the box. You're going to want to check the compressor, just make sure they're on and rolling. 

If PSI starts to decrease, you might want to think about replacing your compressor. You may also check to make sure your filters are clean. Once you locate the filter you twist and remove the cap to see replace with a new filter. All we do is get a new one, replace it. And a lot of times this will fix your PSI problem.

Check the lines:

Next you want to inspect your lines coming out of the box. If there's any extra bubbles coming up, there could be a hole in the line. That usually doesn't happen unless you have beavers or nutria in the fishery near this aeration box. In some cases, one of the lines can become detached to the box. When the lines are installed, they aren't necessarily settled completely in the water. And over time, gravity will slowly pull them down and out of the box.

 So one way to prevent that is trenching with extra slack next to the box. It's an easy way to guarantee that you won't have disconnected hoses. If one does disconnect simply, pull it back up and reconnect. Sometimes an additional length of hose may need to be added. 

Clean out the box:

The other thing I do is I always clean out the box as much as I can. A lot of times, spiders, ants, insects of all sorts will find their way into the boxes.

There can be a lot of different infestations that go on. The box is always creating heat no matter what. So a lot of insects and arachnids will crawl up in the box and take refuge in there. I will always vacuum it out the best I can, then wipe down that is dirty with a sponge. It makes a big difference when servicing the machine to have a clean area. 

There's a lot of great benefits to aeration, but you have to make sure you're keeping up with the upkeep, making sure they're working. If you have any more questions about aeration, just give us a call. Check out our Instagram, Facebook, social media and get in contact with us.

Cody Watkins, BWO Biologist