Venturi valve's

[DevinB]

Soooo, an "experiment"  of sorts I started, in trying to make my bedroom shrimp tanks as quiet as possible. Every air pump/sponge filter combo that I have personally tried, as quiet as they are initially, eventually through parts vibrating loose and filters collecting debris and clogging, end up becoming entirely too loud and vibrate-y.

 

I decided I was going to try to fix that by finding a way to use canister filters so that I can make sure all of my tanks are over filtered, but I didn't want to loose the benefit of the extra oxygen/surface agitation that an air pump/sponge filter provides for shrimplet survival rates. This is when I found out about Venturi valve's, and through some basic modifications to the outputs of canister filters I found the happy medium of a "quietish" tank, the only sound is that of the bubbles popping, no longer the annoying hum of an air pump.

 

And now my shrimp tanks are filled with micro bubbles drifting around in the current for much much longer than I've ever achieved with even the most expensive airstones/difusers that I've tried. And every single female in my Tibee tank I'm experimenting with for the last few weeks are either berried or saddled.. how have I never heard of this before..?  Just in a few weeks I have noticed a huge increase in breeding activity, really expecting shrimplet survival rates to increase as well.

 

If your not a fan of seeing microbubbles I understand I guess, as this has made my tanks look "cloudy" to a degree compared to large airstone and sponge filter bubbles , but my shrimp are the most active I've ever seen..

 

Are there some drawbacks to Venturi valve's that I am not picking up on, I've tried googling then and shrimp tanks bit only really find info for people using them on large ponds and aquaponic systems. Anybody else here ever try put Venturi valves for oxygenation?

[DevinB]

This is my set up on my 36 gallon bowfront. It is a Sunsun 304b with a sponge filter rated for up to 75gallon as pre filter, and a diy Venturi valve on the output. I have a terrible camera on my phone, but it is pretty obvious how many micro air bubbles are circulating on my tank, and the best thing is that the way the pressure changes occur in a Venturi valve to create the air bubbles, it slows down the output of the filter without having much effect on the volume of water being input so you can over filter your tank without blowing your shrimp out of the water. 

[DevinB]

As you can see, there are so many microbubbles that my camera can't focus. Just out of curiosity, today I checked my ph levels every 2 hours, to see what kind of ph changes occur over the course of the day. This tank runs a finnex planted plus 24/7, and it previously would change from 6.1pH at "high noon" or max light output, but by 4 a.m. when the moonlight feature was at it's darkest it would settle around 5.5ph.. well today the lowest it dipped was 5.9ph at similar testing time and the highest was 6.1ph still  at  "high noon"  so it seems my water is much more consistent as well for a 24 hour period