air stones

[bigmac1878]

is there anything i should do to a new air stone to make it work correctly? i have recently aquired a pump an upgraded the air stone to 6" but the problem i have is that bubbles are only coming out of 1 side and only through approx 50% of the length. is there something i should've done before installing the stone?


TIA

 

[Elmware2000]

How big is the air pump? Could be that it's not big enough. If that's not the case, check to see that the pump is making enough air. If the diaphram is broken, then the pump won't make very much air if at all.

 

[Zagz]

Also how long has it been running? Sometimes the airstone takes a bit to bubble through the entire stone.

 

[tropicfishman]

I always soak mine in warm water for about an hour, your air pump maybe to far from the tank, or down to low from the tank, or the tank could be to deep causing alot of back pressure

 

[fish_4_all]

Bigger pump should do the trick. I tried the same thing with a 6 inch airstone and less than 1/4 of it would go. I plugged both sides of the pump into a divider and fed them both to the stone and it almost got air to 1/2 of the stone. My pumps are old so that was part of it but is almost certainly a lack of pressure.

I saw a cool 55 gallon that had a bubble curtain dividing it in half. It comprised of 2 12 inch wands and it took a small air compressor to run them full force.

 

[hc8719]

you need a more powerful airator or less of a airstone

 

[hc8719]

i wouldnt recomend trying to snap the stone in half if its one of those long ones, they crumble in tiny peices and you'd need a plug at the end to stop the air from just going out the broken end

 

[tropicfishman]

I think fish_4_all was saying he had a dual outlet airpump and he jined the tubing from each side into one single piece of tubing to increase the amount of air being forced into the stone

 

[joannde]

Sometimes bubble wand (long type) airstones only flow through one side of they are set on an angle - see if its level first ... just trying to see if there is a simple solution