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Favorite aquascaping rock? Any to avoid?


Dawn T
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Since I rehomed the territorial pleco who had one of my 29g tanks tied up, I can redo that tank. Woohoo! It's been set up as it is for 5 years next month! The photo is how it looks as of today. I did a trim on the crypts day before yesterday. They were crazy-wild and had taken over. They're still some coming up in places I don't want them, but since I want to redo the tank, I left them where they are. The trimming was mainly to cut back the ones that had leaves covering the water surface. I didn't want them cutting the light so much that the other plants I put in recently wouldn't get enough light.

Anyway, I've been hankering to redo this tank, and now I can since it's unoccupied. I think I have the plants I want, though if I need more, I know where I'll be getting them. 😁 I plan to populate the redone tank with swordtails, cories, and zebra danios, with possibly a blue, gold, or dwarf gourami (my favorite) - a combination that's worked really well for me in the past. I'll be ordering those online, which means they won't be ordered until spring. So I don't have to hurry through this "remodel".

Right now, the tank contains a big hunk of mopani driftwood and a Top Fin cave decoration, but I intend to remove the mopani and replace it with rock hardscape and some manzanita. Whether I leave the cave decoration in or not depends on the rock I end up using.

What I can't make up my mind about is the stone/rock for the hardscape. I plan to reuse the existing substrate, which is gravel and sand with eco-complete underneath. (Photo below.) Needless to say, with the combination of colors in my gravel, I have a lot of leeway for rock colors. Every time I look at options, though, I get overwhelmed. So many choices, and I'm not sure if any of them have drawbacks. I'll be ordering them online from an aquarium hardscape supplier, so I'm not worried about getting a type that's not aquarium safe.

So, what's your favorite stone to work with? Why is it your favorite? Are there any you do NOT like? If so, why?

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Thanks, guys. I have some small red lava rock, and I've seen larger pieces available on some of the sites I've looked at. I'll check out the dragon stone, too.

Since I don't like loaches much, I don't have to worry about them. 😉 And none of the fish I listed are "fragile", so I'm not overly concerned about jagged rocks.

I test or research anything that goes into my tank to make sure it won't change the pH in ways I don't want, which is why I avoid a lot of substrates that are available on the market, so I definitely know to check for that. Always good to be reminded, though. Never know when I'll have a brain fart about something like that and it'll bite me in the backside. 😁

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I've always been a fan of slate. It's typically pretty cheap. Home stores like Home Depot and Lowes sell it as floor tiles and sometimes as pathway tiles for a garden. You can buy a big piece (16"X16") for around $6. And it comes in a variety of colors. The neat thing with slate is it's a sedimentary rock. Take a metal putty knife and tap it into the edge with a hammer and you can generally split off lots of smaller pieces of slate from the one big one. It also breaks into small chunks pretty easily. (While splitting it you may even run into a fossil.) If you want precise shapes for pleco caves or something it also cuts pretty easily on a wet saw. In terms of a value rock, it's hard to beat slate. If you're nervous about splitting slate there's a YouTube video on how to split slate from the National Slate Museum in Wales. (I swear there's a museum for everything these days.) 

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I recently came across some maple leaf stone which was so cool i had to buy one.  It is pretty sharp though and i know some people don't like that.  According to "the internet", it won't change your water chemistry either.

 

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The vast majority of rocks will "work", only a few will be perfect at a particular job 🙂 I have no favourites yet. (Jura) hole stone is pretty cool. But not everything in the aquarium needs to pop, often I feel that maybe a dull ordinary unspectacular rock is well worth considering.

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17 hours ago, MAC said:

I really like using lava rock in my tanks. I'm not sure where you would get some though, unless you live near a volcanic area like I do. 

I agree lava rock is nice and if you have a boring drill and the rock is big enough you can carve out nice channels that look similar to lava tubes I diddnt do that in this tank but there's lava rock in it and it holds a lot of bacteria because it's so porus and my shrimp love that it catches all the food that passes by it 

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12 hours ago, MickS77 said:

I like using Seiryu stone. I think the grey color contrasts well with the green of plants. 

Someone mentioned in another thread that Seiryu stone increases pH. Have you found that, too? I've seen it used a lot in online videos, but no one ever mentioned that in the videos. 🤔 ???

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11 hours ago, H.K.Luterman said:

I like stacking a variety of different sized and shaped pieces of slate and flagstone to make caves. I can get them pretty cheap by the pound at a local pond supply store, and then I break them up with a sledge hammer (which is very cathartic! 😉 ).

I hear you! I got to sledgehammer a bunch of walls out of a friend's house years ago when they were remodeling. Definitely therapeutic. 😁

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@GoldenGardner, I saw a professional aquascaper (you know, the kind who participates in those big competitions?) use petrified wood. I've also seen it sold on sites for purchasing aquascape materials (rocks, driftwood, etc). If it's well cleaned, I wouldn't hesitate to use it, if it fit the scape I wanted to do. 🙂

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I finally decided to order some Dragon Stone for redoing that currently-unoccupied (except for snails) 29g tank of mine. It should arrive this week. I've already received part of the substrate I ordered, with another arriving today that will complement that. I intend to keep a portion of what I've already got in there, so I don't have to start the cycling process all over again, as well as keeping the same filter and media running. But plants will be changed out and/or around, and I'm expecting new varieties of plants from Aquarium Co-op this week. I'm so excited about doing something new with that tank! I want to have it ready for occupation this spring, when the weather warms up that I can have fish shipped in. Finally going to order the fish I've wanted for years but aren't stocked by sort-of local shops (nearest one is 35 miles away). Decided I'm not settling anymore for what they DO stock.

Anyway, I appreciate all the feedback on stone types. It really helped me narrow down options so they weren't so overwhelming to consider!

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