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grayentropy

Aerating compost tea

grayentropy
16 years ago

I have an understanding of liquid gas diffusion and wonder if these compost tea aerating techniques I read about on the web are truely effective.The use of an aquarium (or shopvac!) air pump to provide aeration seems flawed as the bubble size is quite large and does not have sufficent time to dissolve in the water before dissapting into the air. In fact due to the relatively large bubble size, most aeration comes at the water/air interface. Air pumps are effective as they disturbe the surface and provide additional surface area for ambient air to diffuse into the water.

I question if the use of 5 gallon buckets with aerators actually provides better aeration than a wide shallow 55 gallon container filled with the same volume without aeration (increased surface area/volume at gas-liquid interface).

My theory is that a shallow container of compost tea (i.e 5 gallons of tea in one of those large rubbermaid storage containers ~35-55 gallons) would be better for brewing tea and may require no external aeration. I also suspect that attempts to brew tea during a good rain storm would be suficiently aerated by the rain perturbing the surface.

I will be using this method in the next couple of weeks but have no experience with compost tea to compare the results.

Does anyone have any thoughts to why a shallow tea brewed in a rain storm would not have sufficent oxygen to keep the microherd alive?

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