Rocks

Falina

I'm soon going to be setting up another tank. I really like the natural look when it comes to decorations so I'm not keen on a lot of the ornaments you can buy. For hiding places, and caves I have used bogwood before however for this tank, in order to have it looking significantly different from my other I would like to try using rocks.

Are there special "aquarium-safe" rocks that can be bought in fish stores? I have never seen any, however I haven't looked specifically for them so it could be that I've just over-looked them before. If not how do I go about making sure any other rocks are safe for my aquarium?

Thanks.

Age of Aquariums

I have a LFS here that has aquarium safe rocks. I think they have a website. I don't know if they will ship to Scotland though.

Falina

Thanks AOA.

I will have another look around different fish stores. Now that I know you can buy rocks from fish stores, I'm sure I'll be able to find them somewhere.

leifthebunny

You want to make sure the rocks are ok for the tank type you are doing. SW tanks prefer rocks with calcium, but not FW. Though IIRC, cichlid substrate has low traces of calcium to help adjust the water to be slightly hard which is African Cichlid preference.

fish_4_all

Lots of different rocks can be used but for caves and such most use slate of some kind. Nice clean cuts and easy to silicone together for some nice caves. Any type of rock can be used if you don't mind getting a little dirty and messy. You can silicone the standard aquarium gravel over a pieve of PVC pipe cut in half for some really nice caves. Some larger river run stones can be flat enough to silicone together by themselves without any support. Even a glass bottle can be used if you can get a clean break in the shape you want and then you sand the edges smooth so the fish can't hurt themselves on it. A dark colored beer bottle or wine bottle would work well for this.

The-Wolf

you may find this usefull, penned by yours truely
http://www.fishipedia.org/index.php?title=Rocks

Falina

Thanks for all the responses everyone - I appreciate it!

Well, first I will try different fish stores to see if there are any rocks on sale there and I can ask them about it, but I have added that link wolf, so it will be easy for me to find again if I have to start looking for rocks myself.

Thanks.

daisycutter

your best bet is to try and source local rocks i haver never bought rocks as i have accsess to an unlimited supply of flint which is inert buying rocks soon adds up and you can find yourself spending alot to get a good display

Falina

Thanks, I will definitely have a look around in that case. The link given earlier will help identify them and failing that, I could always take them into uni and get the (geology?) dept to identify them for me if I'm unsure.

I have tried the gravel on a grainpipe joint idea and it looks alright so far. I think the gravel might get pecked off mind you but I can certainly give it a go. I would never have thought about using glass bottles and sanding them. I might give this a go as well.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Mr.Todd

I am also looking for rocks for my new setup so I went up in the mountains and collected some very cool looking slabs. However, after I took these into our university's geology department I was warned NOT to use them because they contained traces of metals... I would have had not idea if I did not talk to them...

I strongly suggest having someone who knows what they are doing look at your rocks, just to make sure.