New Topic: Porous Rock Group Order

[Sonny Disposition]

I was thinking about the porous rock, but I'm planning to silicone the stuff together and make a rock wall, or a reef or a couple of towers. The porous rock really looks heavy, so I was going to wander around Irwin Stone and see if I couldn't find something lighter to work with. I also want structures that I can remove easily, in case I have to break the tank down fast to remove a holding female or combatatants. (After years of breeding sailfin mollies, I learned that it's best to keep a tank you can take apart quick. With a lot of species, if fish don't want to be removed from a well decorated tank, you aren't going to remove them.

Since sand or gravel doesn't appear to make much difference for this fish, I'm now back to thinking I'll stick with gravel, and throw some Maylasian Trumpet snails in to eat any uneaten food, and put some clown loaches in the tank, to keep the Maylasian trumpets in check.


"Neither.....Use aquasoil and go planted.....couldnt resist the urge.....my vote though would be sand over gravel, black is better looking in my opinion....and the porous rock from the group order looks fantastic with black sand "

 

[ltrepeter2000]

The rock is definitely not light and would not make for an easy teardown if you are siliconing it all together. I would be suprised if you were even able to lift it out if you put it all together......the nice thing about the rock is that the stone has so much texture that it shouldnt need to many contact points siliconed to make it ridiculously sturdy.

 

[maddog10]

Bob, you need to be careful when buying stone. Some can leach some pretty bad things into the tank.

 

[Charlutz]

As I said in your other thread, in my experience loaches aren't effective for MTS. The MTS are livebearers, and they get embedded deep in the filter media where the loaches can't get them. Even the baby snails have those impossibly hard shells. They continue to live and reproduce in the filters. They reproduce very very quickly and will reproduce as long as there is enough food in the tank for them to feed. If the loaches eat them, they'll just make more snails, and in my experience, that just means an unsightly tank littered with empty shells. If you want them in the tank, in my opinion, skip the loaches and don't overfeed.

 

[Sonny Disposition]

I see your point. My tanks are filtered with aquaclears, with a spong over the intake, so I've never had them in the filter. My 55 long is bare bottom, with gravel tubs of val. The clowns in the tank keep the MTS's confined to the tubs. I've still got MTS's, but not to the degree that they're in the 29 high discus tank, which gets over run with them (even though it doesn't have any gravel.)

You make a good point about the shells accumulating, though. And once the MTSs are in the gravel, there's no getting rid of them. (I've even had them survive a bleaching.)

As I said in your other thread, in my experience loaches aren't effective for MTS. The MTS are livebearers, and they get embedded deep in the filter media where the loaches can't get them. Even the baby snails have those impossibly hard shells. They continue to live and reproduce in the filters. They reproduce very very quickly and will reproduce as long as there is enough food in the tank for them to feed. If the loaches eat them, they'll just make more snails, and in my experience, that just means an unsightly tank littered with empty shells. If you want them in the tank, in my opinion, skip the loaches and don't overfeed.[/b]