Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions beavers chewing air hose

Has anyone had a problem with beavers chewing through their air hose?
I noticed no bubbles from one of my aerators and found that the line had been chewed completly through at the point (on shore) where the "irrigation" line connected to the weighted tube. The sinking line had teeth/chew marks and was completely severed...
Mark

Mark welcome to the PB forum. I have never heard of that one but nothing would surprise me about beavers. They will generally not bite metal so you could wrap the hose with alum. foil. Are you sure it was beavers and not coons ?

Did you get the pics I forwarded to you ?

Mark, I received your email> I have not had any reports of the weighted tubing being severed.We had a Parks and Rec Dept in Washington State that had issues on some fountain power cable being chewed by beavers but the weighted tubing in the same water was untouched.They purchased weighted tubing to put the power lines in and stated that did the job for them.How much tubing is exposed onshore and would it be practical to slide it into metal electrical conduit or as Eric suggests try the tin foil route.Not sure if they will go after the tubing "in" the water or not. Post some pics if you find time.Ted

I also had one instance where a muskrat chewed a chunk out of a thickwalled weighted PVC airline. It was also near the same spot where Mark mentioned his was cut - near the exposed connection of black poly and weighted airline. To fix it I just cut out the bad section and reattached the weighted airline to the black poly coupling. Then I buried the new connection and the above water weighted airline under shoreline rocks.

I have seen weighted and unweighted tubing perforated by muskrat, where the tubing was laid in heavy water lilies patches.
I assumed that they took the tubing for some root tuber and tried to take it out of the water. As soon as the air came out, they left it there, but the damage was done! I have samples of chewed tubing at the office.
On one particular site we could count dozen of muskrats feeding about, and after two repairs, they somehow learned to avoid the tubing because we never had to do more repairs.

In maple sugaring operation where the sap collecting tubings are chewed heavily by squirels, they have developed a tubing that is coated with tiny sand particles... It seems like not all squirels will chew tubing, but once they start, it takes a major deterent. They must be attracted by the sweet sap inside... sugar junkies!