The Oxygenator test is real easy and simple to do.

The Oxygenator salesman at Bass Pro Shops told me to do this: Open your livewell lid and look at your fish or live bait… if they all look comfortable in the livewell like gold fish in a fish tank, your Oxygenator is working correctly and generating enough oxygen.

BUT, If your fish or live bait look stressed, red nose, some belly-up and dying or at the surface of the water piping and gulping air… your Oxygenator is definitely not working correctly; it is not generating enough dissolved oxygen and your Oxygenator is not working.

So always look at your fish and bait because their behavior in the livewell will tell you loud and clear if your Oxygenator is working correctly or not working at all. Diagnosing a problem with your Oxygenator is a no-brainer if you are not blind.

Even if it is “working”, there is no REAL way to tell if it’s working. That’s the magic of an oxygenater. Lol.

Nothing works better than a livewell full of water that gets refreshed constantly and has the circulation on auto.

Sounds to me like the Bass Pro salesmen used to work at Nebraska Furniture Mart.

The Oxygenater is an enhancement (a poor one at that) to a properly working livewell system. Nothing more. Possibly less.

NAILED IT

Have to agree with Steez above^^^^^^. That said to actually test your Oxygenator just turn it on. This can be done in your driveway. 1. Fill livewell. 2. Turn on Oxygenator. 3. Watch for the tiny air bubbles rising through the water. Can be done at the lake as long as the water is not to murky. That means it works.....but does it really “work”? I have one only because it came on my Ranger 521. I have heard all the arguments for and against the Oxygenators but I have never seen an actual study where the dissolved O2 in the water was measured with the system OFF and then ON to prove if it actually “WORKS” by increasing dissolved O2 in the water. Not saying there’s not proof out there but I have not seen it. When mine is ON tiny air bubbles rise through the water column in the livewell and appear to escape into the atmosphere. Without data I believe it is “WORKING” but doesn’t actually “WORK”. Good news though: with all the Global Warming, Green Initiatives, deforesting of the rain forests.....if everyone would purchase and run their Oxygenators we would help the planet by putting more oxygen into the atmosphere!

anytime I have bass, I run my aerators on full blast and the livewell fill on auto with minimal time between bursts. I have the oxygenators but have zero faith in them. everytime I clean them with CLR, it doesn't take long for them to cake up again. they are useless imo.

Everything I have ever read doesn't say they don't work it's just that running the aerators in your livewell does more for the fish than those devices. The two working together would seem to be a good thing if you have them. The way I take it is if you have them great but don't waste your money on them if you don't.

Oxygen is relatively insoluble in water, its solubility being only 264 μM
μM
at 25 o C
25oC
. That explains in part why you (and fish) require dedicated oxygen carriers in your blood to transfer sufficient oxygen around your body.

That oxygen is weakly soluble can be explained, as you point out, on the basis of the hydrophobic effect, which amounts to saying that water likes to hydrogen bond, and an oxygen molecule is not very good at that compared to another water molecule.

That oxygen is soluble at all can be explained on two grounds. First, statistics, just the random mixing of matter. Some oxygen molecules will happen to find their way into water and not find their way out for a while. The other explanation is that oxygen is not entirely nonpolar: it lacks a permanent dipole moment, but it is polarizable. Even molecules that we think of as highly water repellent can exist as liquids (oxygen is a gas at room temperature but can be cooled into a liquid state), which means something must be keeping them together, and that is dispersion forces due to the polarizability of all atoms and molecules.

Exactly

I was about to say that and you beat me to it.

yup! I was typing all that and he beat me, too!! dang ol scientic matter of oxygen equivalents gone wild!

I don’t run an oxygenator but having those pumps working On auto sure does the trick in my boat. Once I tried to manually manage my pumps to save a bad battery and it cost me with some dead fish.

One thing I’ll add to the original post is to look at the position of your fish in the livewell. If they are on the bottom wirh their nose down then your system is in great shape.

Please explain the bubbles in my beer. Their are no wires coming from the bottle.