Fragile airstones

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but this was only halfway down the page and on the same subject...

I seem to be the slayer of airstones.

Setting up my daughter's little tank last time (before we knew about fish), I had decided to reroute a tube and needed to take off the airstone. I held it primarily by the plastic bit that goes into the hose and pulled the hose away. It disintegrated in my hand.

Now my wife is setting up a 20long as a fry tank. We went out and got most of the stuff that she needed for it, and I went ahead and set up her filter/circulation system in the community tank to that it would be ready when the new tank is set to be filled. She got a nice long heavy green kinda trapezoidal cross-section air bar. I was impressed with it, even bubbles across the length and it did not take away too much airflow from the sponge filter to make it work. However, the way the hose was kinked it kept rolling over onto it's side. I went to move the hose into a different orientation so it would lay better. With the above mentioned insta-shrapnel airstone well in mind, I very carefully tried to gently remove the hose from the end of the stone, being careful to only apply pressure to the plastic portion of the stone assembly... The plastic broke off the airstone and took a good chunk of one corner with it.

I'm old school geek. I can deal with the tiniest of jumpers and dip switches. I can resolder an etch in the middle of a freeway style run. I do NOT have gorilla hands.

Why on earth can I not keep an airstone in one piece?

Do you only work with them dry?

Do you never try to remove a hose from one?

There is a thread here with people taking about washing and reusing airstones and having them last years....

What am I missing?

 

My tip (I have ruined about 4, but none since I started doing this!!): When I want to remove one, I use my nail to push the airtube away, rather than pull at the stone directly.

It may have been better to start a new thread, you get more responses that way

 

Mylar hope you don't mind I moved your question to where you might get more responses By the way if I haven't already said so to FishLore!

I like the little blue bubble stones because they tend to send out smaller bubbles but after they've been in the water a couple of weeks they seem to just disintegrate in my hand if I pull on them. Now I use the bubble bars or bubble wands instead.
Carol

 

I've done the same thing to air stones of all colors. It doesn't take much. I use my nail or a anything with a hard edge and pry the edge away just slighty. Once you get a little air in it will pop right off about 80% of the time without breaking.

 

Weird, I never have that problem. At first I thought maybe you had the "disposable" airstones I've seen at Petco. All the ones I have are from Petsmart and I've yanked on them a lot without a problem.

-Lisa