Aquarium Decoration (Rocks, Plants and Substrates) • Mississippi River rock as substrate

[Dooner]

I set up a 40 gallon breeder tank using the above as substrate. No sand or gravel. I thought it would be easier to clean. Well, it is not. Lots of stuff (don’t know what it is..clumps of poop from two fish with food) gathers under and around the rocks. I have to manually move them around to suck up the stuff. How about just piling up the rocks in a couple places and leaving the rest as plain glass? I would then just suck around the piles and just deconstruct the piles once in a while. Any thoughts? The river rocks are 3-5 inch semi flat colored stones.

[cyclonecichlids]

Not a very good substrate. Sand works better and allows for beneficial bacteria to live and digest fish poop. Also, your tank will look cleaner because you won't have poop laying around in plain sight. I would get rid of the rocks altogether. Keep some large stones, build small cave-like structures out of them. Toss the rest. Keeping stones on the glass is also not a very safe thing.

[Dooner]

I ended up removing about half the stones and then added Caribbean aragonite. Looks nice. I placed the larger river rocks in several piles. The poop culprit was the pleco. I may move him to a different tank. The gravel/sand is really easy to vacuum. The bonus is the aragonite was on sale online at Petco. The fry are surprisingly easier to see against the argonite versus the bare glass.

[spn1025]

I used rocks too, combined with large gravel (turtle rocks?)