Air stones don't last long?

[BennyLava]

I've noticed that all those blue colored airstones don't really last long. Before... I don't know. Something happens to them, and they just don't flow air so well anymore. When you first get them, They seem to flow well when you first get them, then they finally barely flow at all. Is there some way to combat this? Or do you just have to buy new airstones? Mine seem to last about 8 months and then they're done. They slowly get worse and worse, until they need to be replaced.

 

[dieselplower]

Are they developing a crud on them that impedes flow?

 

[sissy]

I clean mine with a toothbrush after soaking them in peroxide and baking soda .I have even used baking soda and vinegar so that i get the fizzing action to help the dirtier ones .Denture tablets will work also .They don't have any cavities either .

 

[BennyLava]

Are they developing a crud on them that impedes flow?

Must be. But they don't really look awful or anything. They aren't that new blue anymore, they may have a little brown here and there.

I clean mine with a toothbrush after soaking them in peroxide and baking soda .I have even used baking soda and vinegar so that i get the fizzing action to help the dirtier ones .Denture tablets will work also .They don't have any cavities either .

Think it would work to just drop some denture tablets in some water with the airstones? I'd like to put forth as little effort on this as possible. LOL

 

[minnowman]

Good quality airstones can be cleaned by soaking in muriatic acid for several hours then rinsing clean.

 

[Dave 54]

The best airstones to buy are the ceramic ones these are what the Japanese use they last for a very long time .
A good long soak in vinegar usually clean them up and open any blocked pores, the blue ones are ok but are made of sand so eventually they wear away, so spend the extra money on the ceramic ones.
Every now and again give them a bit of a clean plus a bit of a scrub rinnse them clean and away you go.

rgrds

Dave

 

[sissy]

I have 2 ceramic ones but they are not cheap but agree they are nicer Dave and much less prone to clogging .But you do have to watch you don't crack them or let them freeze .I got the 2 I have as a gift from my niece .The 2 inch ball ones I only paid 99 cents for each so they were a steal .

 

[Dave 54]

I asked Jeff to pop up to the Aquatic shop to get me one or two more ( they had sold out ) he came back with these white ceramic ones .
When I asked where on earth he got them from he said the local hydroponics shop at 50p each , the aquatic shop charge the best part of £3.90.
Though slightly smaller I think they will do the job nicely, I've asked him to buy some more, "lots more" :afro: hell why not its a huge saving .

rgrds

Dave

 

[sissy]

I got mine from a hydroponics sight and they were 3 dollars and are 3 inches long .Same place I got my weighted air line and plant pots for my pond and got those clay balls to plant in also .I heard how great they are and bought a bag just to see .I also bought there organic liquid concentrated fertilizer and gosh that suff makes plants grow like crazy ,better than miracle grow .There is a place in North Carolina about an hour from my house .They use a fish pond to fertilize there plants also .

 

[Dave 54]

There are special ceramic airstones that are designed to sit flat against the bottom of your pond.
They do this because on either end of these tube shaped airstones are plastic caps.
I know of two ways to clean cerammics , one you soak them in vineger the other is to pass liquid oxygen through it which apparently gives them a far better clean than any other methods you can mention.
I take it the liquid oxygen can be bought in a hydrophonics going off what our friend Jeff said.

rgrds

Dave

 

[Catfishnut]

I have used airstones and sintered brass "exhaust silencers". You may not know what those silencers are if you are not familiar with industrial pneumatics, but they are similar to an airstone, only they are manufactured from brass. Their purpose is not to aerate, but to "quiet" the noise of air exhausting from pneumatic solenoid valves and cylinders used in the industrial manufacturing fields. I use these sintered brass silencers because I can get them for free from work when they get clogged up and they throw them away. I clean them with muriatic acid or vinegar and reuse them as long as I am able, then I have to toss them out when they get too bad.

What I find is that both the airstones and the brass silencers have an inherent flaw in design which causes them to actually siphon water into the porous material as the air is bubbling out from other sides. This draws in the hard water elements such as calcium, iron manganese, etc. They all eventually clog up the pores in these aeration devices and, after so many cleaning cycles, they just become degraded so badly that you have to replace them.

Here is what I have found that is much less expensive, aerates much better and lasts longer (albeit that this also has the same inherent problem as the previous mentioned devices).

Garden soaker hose! The black, porous, slow leaching garden hose that you would use to water garden plants, trees and shrubs and flowers. You can buy a 15, 25 or maybe 50 foot length of this soaker hose and, with a little minor engineering, cut it up into small sections and connect it to your aerator pump. It produces thousands.... millions of fine bubbles and at a fraction of the cost of the stones or my sintered brass silencers. All you need is some barbed fittings that will fit the ID of the soaker hose and attach to your aeration tubing and then you have to either weight the hose down in the pond or attach the hose to some rocks or wires or zip ties under water to hold it from floating out of position. For my galvanized stock tanks, I bought shower curtain hangers and cut them up a bit to make hooks and epoxied them to the side walls of the tank near the bottom. Then I ran the soaker hose all around the perimeter, hooking it under the "hook" of the shower hanger. The hose stays in place and when it does eventually get full of crud and I need to replace it, I just slip it out from under my shower curtain hooks and put the new section in and toss the old one. They are so inexpensive that this is, to me, the ultimate way to go. Too easy, too cheap and works too well not to give it a try!

This won't work with a standard aquarium air pump, of course, you need something with much more CFM volume. Also, I have found that some soaker hoses work much better than others, so you will have to experiement to find the one that works really exceptional. I thought they would all be the same, but that is not the case.

Give it a try, it is cheap enough that you won't be out much money if it doesn't work for you of if you don't like it.

Catfishnut

 

[Dave 54]

Interesting are these the things you are talking about in the link I've put up :-

http://www.jj-pneumatics.com/acatalog/exhaust-silencers.html

If so how do you get aroumd the airpipe problem because as you can see there is a major difference between what is on the end of an aquatic airstone sand or ceramic also how can you be sure that all the polution they catch has been totally removed prior to you using them as airtones for the pond.
Also dont the corrode being brass or did you mean bronze ones , also how would one who doesnt work where you work get their hands on them and just how much would they cost for one of us to buy one ?

rgrds

Dave

 

[Catfishnut]

Dave,

Yep, the sintered "BRONZE" items a few items down the list are what I had used in the past (because they were free from work).

I connected them to tubing using other connectors which had female pipe threads on one side and a barbed fitting to fit an airline hose on the other.
To clean the "USED" ones, I used a heavy-duty degreaser, rinsed them thoroughly, then soaked them in muriatic acid and rinsed them again, then
washed them well with a mild detergent and rinsed them again. They were clean as brand new and never a worry about any contaminants.

However, it was not the point of my posting to sell anyone on the use of these sintered bronze silencers, it was just for background information and
a prelude to speaking of the use of the garden soaker hose to be used as an aerator.

The soaker hose is dirt cheap compared to air stones (especially when you think of how many "bubblers" you can fabricate out of a 15 or 25 foot soaker hose).
AND, they produce fantastic air bubbles! If you get the right soaker hose, the bubbles are very fine and very numerous, so they dissolve into the water much
more readily.

I have cut the soaker hoses into all different lengths to make aerators, from just a few inches long up to 16 feet or so. I have an eight foot long two foot wide,
oblong horse watering tank that I used to keep all my fish in. I wrapped the 16 foot hose all around the side wall of the tank, securing it with shower hangers
epoxied to the sides of the tank to keep it from floating up. Then, in the middle I installed a TEE fitting that ran to my air pump. It worked beautifully and
if I cranked up the volume I could actually get the water to boil out over the sides of the tank (too much agitation there, I know).

You should experiment with the soaker hose idea sometime. I know you will be amazed and happy with the results.

Catfishnut