Soaking airstones and uneven bubble distribution

[James Croney]

Spent the last while frustrated and thinking about why my new airstone was only putting out bubbles near the top. I wanted a pretty 'bubble curtain' thing like I see online. 😄 ... Err, but I also wanted to do it for like $4 so i got a long thin single-barb airstone from LFS.

A bit of googling later, I found out I might need to soak it in my tank for a day, or as some other guy on the internet said "up to a week for it to be optimum".

Soaking my airstone now. Seeing if this helps.

Posting here, because I searched for thing like airstone soaking and airstone uneven bubbles etc and didn't find anything. Just adding data to the pile. 

"go soak your airstone" sounds like a pretty nermy diss. 😄

[Levi_Aquatics]

The ziss never clog airstones are great! They produce small even bubbles and they only cost like 4 bucks! 

[James Croney]

Yup yup! Those little ziss airstones are great. Very clever no-clog mechanism. I run that and a USB Nano Air Pump on my little hexagon tank. There is a post somewhere in the forums about it. Its honestly the best airstone I have had.

I do wonder where the air intake on the USB Nano Air Pump is though. I can't seem to find it.  I suppose that is another topic though. 😄

[Frosty.R]

Hi James,

I had a similar problem at one point, and all I did was soak it some boiling water for half an hour and then scrub the stone with a hard bristle brush or even a toothbrush.

Make sure the check valve is in correctly too 👍

Edited January 31, 2021 by Frosty.R

[Medkow74]

The few larger air stones I've ever bought. Like the disk and/or bubble curtain type they've all said to soak them in the tank, I forget how long, before hooking them up to air.