i am having some problems with my fish tank. i just bought 3 air stones. and they seem not to be giving me the fine air bubbles i want.
i have a 30 gallon fish tank. and i use 3 air pumps that are made for 20 to 30 gallon fish tanks. i dont have alot of decorations but a few plastic plants.
what can be the problem stopping me from getting the fine air bubbles. do need to have the air guage that splits the air so that it can go into different tubes?
Answers:
Typical air stones don't give off the fine bubbles like you want. Bubble wands do. You can change the fineness of the bubbles somewhat by burrying them in the gravel, but usually this makes bigger bubbles. Using a valve like you are talking about doesn't really affect the fineness of the bubbles, just the pressure and speed that they are released, though this is a nice feature to have too. They make other airstones that are made of wood. They are more expensive but they make really fine bubbles and they last much much longer. I would look into getting these or a bubble wand instead if you really want fine bubbles.
I have had the same trouble with using standard air stones, they also clog up really quickly and it's hard to clean them without having to pull the whole airline out each time, so in a large planted tank like mine it caused real problems.
I now use Ceramic Air Diffusers instead of the standard Air stones. They are a little more expensive, but much less hassle!
These Air Diffusers I use look very similar to the Air stones, but are made from different material (glass-bonded silica) that allows the tiny dust particles to pass right through them. And the round grain pore structure, low resistance to air flow makes them resistant to clogging. They have tiny pores which produce the smallest bubbles possible, so even with a low pressure pump I get large surface aeration.
I have a 52 gallon fish tank and only use one small air pump. But I also have some live plants in there, as not only do they look pretty, give fish something to investigate, they help a great deal with providing the sufficient amount of oxygen fish need. You might want to look into getting some in your tank, it's much cheaper than running all those air pumps.
