Sticking an aquarium air pump inside my pot

[Optimist]

I love innovation and experimentation. Plants use CO2, not "air." Air is a mixture of many kinds of gasses. Maybe you can look into a CO2 "engine." Farmers of Cannabis, and owners of aquarium "planted tanks" use CO2 engines to get better more vigorous plants. I believe the simplest DYI CO2 engine has a bottle with water, yeast and sugar in it, and some hose method for getting the gasses discharged by the yeast, who eat the sugar into the base of the plant. You run the risk of the bottle blowing up, and also the place smelling like bread dough-- but those are the breaks.