API 8PB Pond Breather Heated Aerator, 40 Watts

This product worked as advertised during the harshest winter in decades here in Centreville MD. Ice on our 2500 gallon pond was 6-8 inches deep for weeks, but the koi survived the winter with no problems. It is a little hard to clean, but a bottle brush does the trick! . Update 4.27.2015 We had another unseasonble cold winter again, worse then last winter with sub-freezing temps for over a month. The pond breather worked great for a second season, even when it was totally covered in snow. All the fish survived again,and grew significantly larger in their dormant state. Be sure to clean it well before it is put away for the summer. Hopefully I can get a third winter from this product, but I am going to purchase another for a back up soon. Update 09/032017. Forgot to update in the spring. The product worked well last winter too, but the winter was fairly mild. The unit did clog with debris, but it was easy to see that it was clogged because the bubbler is in a clear acrylic tube. The unit had stopped bubbling. I could see this from my second story window. I simply removed the unit from the water, removed the pre filter and cleaned the pump. Then replaced the pre filter and put the unit back in the water. The unit does not freeze in the water because it has a small heater built into it. Oh, at the end of the season one of the acrylic tubes broke/ detached at a seam when I was cleaning it. I think it was my fault for being to rough with it. I simply glued it back on with gorilla super glue. Seemed to fix it fine. Update. It worked well over the 2019-2020 winter too. This think keeps going, just keep it clean and it will keep working. PS Other folks I know lost ALL their koi a few winters back. Be smart and get a heater like this that also aerates the pond

This will NOT keep a giant hole in your pond's ice, if you want that, you need to stick to the trough heaters. So far, even after the arctic blast most of the US faced (and I'm in CO), this has done quite well. Water continues to flow through the gas exchanger, and its faced -8 F nights and several days continuous well below freezing. I can still see my goldfish lazing about below the surface of my roughly 1500 gallon pond. So far no problems with clogging, although I placed it in my pond when I began to see ice form on the surface, so the water was probably a little cool for crazy algae growth at that point. I feel a lot more comfortable using this than the trough heaters (pretty much any other "pond heater") as it does not have exposed elements, and its energy use is much lower. It also aerates water, something a trough heater by itself will not do. I would knock half a star off for the somewhat loose fitting gray pipe that extends below the surface. I'll superglue it on for next year, so not a big deal. I'm a little surprised this isn't more popular given what it does and its price point.

I've been using it for a few weeks now in a shallow pond. The temperature has dropped down to 18F so there is a half inch of ice on the pond now. The gold fish seem happy swimming slowly under the clear ice. The unit is apparently circulating the water enough. I am a little concerned about electricity usage, but the 40 watts should be ok. We'll see how it does when the weather gets below zero.

It worked ok for couple of months then one day tipped over and wasn’t aerating anymore.. this happened after a snowfall and freaked me out as there was a risk of ice build up. Fortunately the pond was large enough to not freeze over but I wouldn’t depend on it in future

Best heated aerator ever purchased

Terrible product. Bought one at local store that stopped working within a few weeks. Decided to give it another try and bought a replacement through Amazon. Worked fine for two weeks. We then left home for a week and when we returned the new one had stopped pumping. Glad I tried them early in the winter season. No way would I buy another one and trust it to keep our fish alive over an entire winter.

needs 32 inches or deeper to float upright and really clean water ( no leaves or sediment) to keep the pump inlet clean. it does not float above the bottom ( the inlet) I really would have liked this due to the low watt draw , I wonder if this would work consistently at a continuous 15 to 20 below zero (48 hours or more) the pump is fairly small great idea, not sized for my pond

I bought this for the first year of trying to keep a koi stocked 3,000 gallon pond over the winter here in Michigan. I wasn't sure if it was going to be the right call or not, mostly because of the mixed reviews I read before purchasing it. But I decided to give it a shot and couldn't be happier. It has functioned flawlessly for the entire winter and while there was 3-4" of ice on the pond you could still clearly see the gas-exchange pump was functioning as expected. My advice to anyone on the fence: Buy this, try it and keep an eye on it. Worst possible case is you discover it breaks down mid-season which is easy to determine (and easy to fix both short term and long term, since it's just a pretty standard aquarium pump powering it).