We went down to the river and p/u some nice rocks. Some I beleive may be granite or quartz. Among other kinds.

What kind of rocks Should You Not....put in your tank
Of course I will wash them and then boil them.
I just don't want to put the wrong kind in.
I already have some river rocks in tank; I picked up in Louisanna at the river.
They seam to be fine. No bad changes in the PH levels.

Please let me know, I am in the process of cleaning them now.

Thanks Everyone

Very simple test - put a few drops of ordinary vinegar on each. If the vinegar fizzes or bubbles on any of them, don't use those. Those are the ones that will change your pH. The other rule of thumb is the darker the rock is, the safer it is.

also rocks that have glittery stuff in them are not recommended; they can lower your ph under certain conditions

Are you talking about granite rock?

Safe rocks are Crystalline Quartz, Granite, Jade, Lava rock, Jaspar,
Onyx, petrified Wood, Quartz, Slate.

Unsafe rocks: Coal, Coral, Dolomite, Fools Gold, Fossils, Limestone,
Marble, Sandstone

Some of these that they list can be used in the tank - but they will
change your water parameters so you need to know what you are doing.
In general, sedimentary rocks are not so good, igneous are fine, and
metamorphic are usually OK.

White vinegar added to the surface of a rock will "fizz" in a "unsafe"
rock. In a conglomerate - test the rock all over.


http://www.uniquaria.com/articles/sr.html

Thats very cool Paul

Thanks

I didn;t know that emma very intresting.

don't use a rock that has sharp points on it because it can cut your fish.

I have no clue what kind of rocks mine are, but ive used them for years without problems and the rock never broke down either. They arent sharp either. oh is rocks made of glass ok? one of my rocks looks like that, its clear with a bluish tint

Glass rocks or nuggets are fine - as long as they don't have any sharp edges - because glass is totally inert.

i bought a "natural rock" (at least that's what they called them at the pet store) to raise my calcium levels for my mystery snail. ( i read that they need natural calcium in the water??) the guy at the pet store told me it would raise my pH about 2 points. I have a black moor in the tank as well, and so far i have had it in there for about a month now, and nothing really bad has happened. my goldie had a scrape on his side, ( i think the rock is sharper than others) but it healed faster than normal and he's been fine. any comments/concerns about that?

You might want to ask your question in the snail section. Any idea
on what the rock actually is?

Any chance of a pic? Or if needed, you can email it to me. Know
any geology instructors?

I have just bought a lava stone budda to place in my tank and just to make sure it was safe performed the vinegar test and it fissled. Should I risk it?

Georgia

Using lava rocks in goldfish tanks generally isn't recommended.
Being a sharp scratchy rock, they can easily hurt your little
fishy friend. So it's better to be safe than sorry.

for my rocks, I just went to a river down by my house and gathered a few rocks from there...rinsed them off...boiled them...cooled them off in dechlorinated water...placed in my tank during the next water change. My fish love them, i set them up like a volcano and have my air stone in there...its mount wanna-take-a-tinkle. dont nkow what type they are..but i nkow they are fine for the tank, no pH change or anything.

MARTINEZ - i too have a natural rock in my tank, (and a snail, AND a black moor! ) it never raised my ph either
My rock doesn't fall apart at all, (?) wonder if you have the right kind of rock (lol or if i do!) it helps my snails a LOT...
as for my fish, i filed any sharp edges off of it so she couldnt' hurt herself

lol bueller....bueller....bueller....

has anyone tried using pea gravel? it's often used for landscaping, it's a mixture of small dark rock... but they seem to have kind of sharp edges, i was just wondering if anyone has tried using it and if they've had any problems with it. oh yea, i believe that the use of lava rock would probably not be a good choice because it is porous, the fizzle is never good either

I'd like to add river rocks to my tank - I've learned everything I need to know now from this thread if I want to find a river and collect some myself - but I've found some really cheap "polished river stones" at a store near me (only 99p/bag) - it's NOT an LFS - and it says on the pack that the stones are for terrariums and making potted plants look nice, etc - is there any reason to believe they wouldn't be safe in my goldfish aquarium? The look A LOT like the expensive polished river rocks my LFS sells!

I'd be interested to know what you guys think...

p.s. Mark - the gravel in my aquarium was sold to me labelled "pea gravel", but it's not how you describe it - it's smooth and light coloured!

Mark:i have pea gravel and it is like some diffrent sizes of rocks ranging from almost black to almost white i really like it a lot and it gives the tank a natural look.

Kim, that is exactly what I have in my aquarium. I got them at the dollar store...they are fine, just rinse them in hot water first, and then set them in the sun to dry...rinse them in cool water then put them in. (that's how I did it anyways) and they are pretty and the fish love to poke around them looking for food

pea gravel?

wats tat? peas that are left out to dry and harded so that it becomes a rock?!
sorry, just joking...

actually, pea gravel is all i use, and it's fine... my goldfish are big enough now where they suck it in and spit it out right away. they're good for cleaning the bottom all i did was just wash all of the dust and such off real well with water first...

i use river rocks i bought from the cheap shop becuase they looked alot like the ones at the petshop. i havent had any problems with them. I used them to make a rock garden in the middle of my tank

can i take rocks from the beach, boil them and use them????????
i mean a SEA's beach... u know.. salty...

Rocks from the shore shouldn't hurt anything unless it was a porouse type of rock. Still, boiling and soaking would be in order! One doesn't know what might be lurking in a inclusion!

Also the tanish colored rock mentioned earlier in a post is most likely limestone. Limestone isn't as harmfull as most people think, it will bring up the ph and KH which is something goldfish/carp species like. A lot of Koi owners actually use crushed limestone in there filters or add chuncks into the waterfalls. Limestone is a source for calcium & magnesium! You can get the same effect with baking soda to raise the kh & ph. Another source is crushed oyster shell, aka chicken grit.

Blue rock is a no no, its generally copper based. <_<

cool!

Hey i have an empty 20gal aquarium and i was thinking about putting a black moor and a celestial in there. But they only problem is that instead of gravel i have black sand. Is this a bad thing?

Thanks

I think it'd be ok, fish wouldn't really pick at sand. My question is, can it get caught in their gills when it floats around or can it scratch them? cause those are the only cons i can think of.

EDIT::
quick note, i found this while searching around::



hope this helps

yep sand isn't good for goldfish, since it will irritate the gills.

koko if it irrtate the gills of goldfish does it do this to other fish if not y not

thanks

Sand in tanks with goldies isn't good. The big reason is a tank is only
so big. So, once the sand get's stirred up, the fish has no where to
go to get away from it. In the wild, fish such as carp live in streams and
other fast moving bodies of water. If they stir up the bottom, the current
takes most of the junk away. Or, if they are in a big lake or large pond,
they can simply swim to a different area that hasn't been stirred up.

Just wondering if malt vinegar would do the trick? It's what I've got in the cupboard, it's still vinegar, just malted I s'pose.

What I've got is a distilled white vinegar. Ingredients:

select grain, diluted with water to a uniform pickling and
table strength of 5% (50 grain) acidity.

If that made any sense?

That makes sense. I'll just pick up some white vinegar next time I'm out, to be sure, to be sure.

The previous house owners must have been rock fanatics. Our backyard is full of different specimens, some only pebble size and some big quartz lumps (one foot round).

I was thinking of putting some in the pond/tub just to look pretty and give the fish somewhere to hide and play.

Just a note, if you coat ornaments in epoxy, it should prevent leeching.

Hey everyone Newbie here...

I got 3 beautiful redcap Orandas and unfortunatly couple of them caught Ick, going crazy to find the treatmeant and process etc, but the place has helped me alot, thanx everyone. Anyway Rocks.... all the points from others are great and i think i wanna add that maybe Bigger rocks are helpfull too for cleaning purposes and therefore have a healthier environment. Over and out.

i have pea gravel i bought from lowes a fish breeder friend of mine recomended it since i prefer "natural" look and i was kinda complaining about buying 1/2 lb of fish rocks for $4-$5.00..lol i got 50 Lbs of pea gravel for $3.17 (w/ tax) i love it.

I'm sorry, I know this quote comes from an old post... but that volcano idea is AWESOME.

I guess I am lucky in three ways: In Georgia rocks "grow" right up out of the ground. I wondered why people BOUGHT rocks when all I had to do was walk around the yard & pick 'em up! I scrubbed them real good, didn't use soap, just hot water & elbow grease. Then I placed them in my tank. I'm glad it wasn't a BAD kind!!

So the three ways! 1) Free Rocks 2) Safe Rocks 3) Pretty Rocks

oooh, quartz! It would be so pretty to have all sorts of different colors of quartz and other gemstones on the bottom of the tank...

Ok, when I'm a millionaire, that's what I'm going to do.

FTB

does anyone know where I can find big rocks? I have a tall 20gal tank and I would like to use some BIG rocks. The local petstore (petsmart and petco) only had small lava rocks.

can i use a silver sheet of micah
and a half agate (those kinds with the crystals in the middle and they were ball shaped and you smash them open)

All of my rocks I found outside. They've never chaanged anything and one of them is completely black and white sparklies.

I rad pretty high up in the postings that you should'nt put coral in a tank.

Why shouldn't you, what does it do? I'd like to know because I've got two pieces of coral in my tank that I got from the Gulf of Mexico. Everything has been fine as far as I know.

I don't know if anyone will see this post or not, but I bought a really adorable carving which I was hoping to put in my tank. It looks like it was carved out of opal, its kind of clear and milky, in the right light it reflects different colors like yellow, orange, pink, blue, and green.

Oops I couldn't edit my last post, but I researched opal a bit and found out that it is inert, which means that it should be okay to put in the tank.

I thought opal exploded when it was in water?

Never heard that before, opal has water in it

I haven't heard of that either. If opal was that volatile it wouldn't be used to make jewelry. The carving has been in the tank for about 24 hours and it hasn't exploded yet.