WEBSITE UPDATED Tuesday June 22, 2022
In the hot summer months, livewell aerators and bait tank water pumps are seriously limited by the low oxygen concentration in ambient air (air contains less than 21% oxygen), not by the volume or velocity of air bubbling in livewell/bait tank transport water. The number and size of air bubbles and total volume of water volume pumped through the well per minute/hour. These mechanical aeration devices pump water, air, or both. Keep in mind that ambient air is not oxygen, neither is oxygen ambient air contrary to popular beliefs. Extra unnecessary swimming work always and abnormal stress always increases cellular oxygen demand especially when bait fish and tournament fish are captures and transported. The amount of oxygen in ambient air and ambient environmental water is always seriously limited by oxygen concentrations less than 21% oxygen during live transports in livewells and bait tanks every summer.
This serious oxygen limitation combined with minimal overstocking during summer transports is the cause of hypoxic livewell water (acute and chronic suffocation minute by minute) always resulting in increased summer livewell mortality and morbidity in your livewells and bait tanks. This predictable low oxygen problem in summer livewells and bait tanks is corrected by administering additional supplemental oxygen.
Do you have and use a real “Live Well” or maybe you use a “Death-Well” to transport tournament fish and live bait in the summer?
Imagine being injured, acute chest pains, severe physical and emotional stress and scared for your life. EMT’s are transporting you to a hospital that is 8 hours away. You need oxygen, but the EMT transport vehicle has a small electric fan (equivalent to an aerator/bait pump). No oxygen is available for you on this trip. You get to the hospital 8 hours later, you still need oxygen, but the hospital has bigger A/C fans blowing more air on you. No oxygen available for you.
We see this exact scenario happening every summer in livewells transporting live bait fish and tournament bass, crappie and walleye. Air simply does not contain enough oxygen in overcrowded livewells full of live bait and heavy limits of tournament fish. Non-functional aerated summer livewells are often death-wells. If your tournament fish and live bait fish are sickly or dying during live summer transports, you probably have a Non-Functional Livewell. You may have yourself a Death Well.
Professional fish transporters bubble compressed welding oxygen in their transport live wells when transporting live fish. Air simply does not contain enough oxygen to meet minimum safe dissolved oxygen water quality standards when bait tanks are minimally overstocked in the summer. As you already know, morbid live bait transports results are predictable when bait tank pumps and aeration systems work perfectly but fail to deliver enough oxygen to satisfy the biomass of fish or live bait.
Anglers using The Oxygen Edge™ manipulate the dissolved oxygen in bait tank water by simply bubbling the right dose of 100% oxygen into the water to achieve 130% DO to 175% DO. The result is “SUPERCHARGING LIVE BAIT FISH.”
Never entrain pure 100% oxygen into a water pump on the inlet side of the pump via venturi device – FIRE HAZARD
Serious oxygen-rich fires ignited by the electric motor arch will burn extremely hot even when the water pump is under water inside a livewell. Divers use pure oxygen fire underwater to heat, cut and melt steel with the torch flame.
Some advocate entraining air through a venture tube on the inlet side livewell water pumps to make millions of tiny air bubbles. This does make millions of tiny air bubbles and also dramatically increases dissolved nitrogen gas concentration in the water. Nitrogen gas Supersaturation causes nitrogen narcosis, gas embolism and a fish disease called pop-eye.
Pop-Eye (swelling of the fish’s eye or eyes) is caused by nitrogen gas supersaturation in water. Pathologically, tissue fluid leaks into areas behind the eyeball. The excessive nitrogen gas tension causes excessive fluid buildup engorging the eyeball forcing the eyeball outward.