Aquarium stones: types, selection and application

A good aquarium should look as natural and believable as possible, because many aquarists tend to visually bring it closer to the river or sea bottom. It is impossible to do this without stones, and although you can buy dummies and real cobblestones in the pet store, many experienced fish breeders prefer to personally select stones in natural reservoirs. However, as in all other cases, this must be done wisely.

Stones for an aquarium are only perceived by beginners purely as an aesthetic decoration, in fact, their functionality is much wider and that is why it is impossible to choose any minerals for a home reservoir. In addition to banal beauty, such aquarium decorations are also needed to achieve the following goals:

• imitation of the natural habitat - for a fish, a simple vessel will be as comfortable as an unfurnished apartment for you, and pets will take root much better if the interior of the aquarium resembles the places in which they live in the wild;
• you can hide in stones - even if you are sure that your favorite fish in the aquarium does not have any enemies, this will not help her give up instincts, and if she does not have the opportunity to hide, she will be nervous;
• pebbles can be used to equip the nest - another instinct makes the fish hide its masonry in order to be sure that predators will not reach it, it will not be demolished by the current, and so on;
• Depending on their chemical composition, natural stones can also affect the hardness of aquarium water.

Artificial stones can also be used. - It's not for nothing that they are sold in pet stores, where all the goods are selected by specialists. They are good in that they do not require any preliminary preparation, but you need not to overdo it with their originality - they do not always resemble what can actually be found at the bottom of water bodies.

First of all, you can use any decorative pebbles of artificial origin that are sold in stores. Colored glass or even a luminous placer will decorate the aquarium bottom and add interesting overflows to it, while it will not affect the chemical composition of water. Decorative products, which received their own well-established names, for example, gained great popularity. "The Dragon".

When choosing natural stones, it should be understood that not all minerals are suitable for this purpose. By the way, even collecting material is not advisable everywhere - sea stones from experienced aquarists are not in great demand, they prefer to collect granite debris in the vicinity of stone quarries, the raw materials of which are then sent to the construction site or for sculptural needs. Naturally, even here, not everything is suitable for adding to the aquarium.

Experienced aquarists advise younger colleagues to give preference quartz - it is easy to identify by characteristic veins or crystals of a whitish and transparent structure. In addition, for the aesthetics of the aquarium and the safety of its inhabitants, it is advised to pay special attention to ensuring that the stones are of the same breed, have similar dimensions and texture, and also do not have sharp edges that can be injured.

If we talk about specific names of breeds, then there will be many options. From what is often found in pet stores, you should pay attention to the so-called Kenyan stone and Carpathian sandstone. Will not be superfluous either gneiss and granite, limestone and slate, tuff and porphyry, marble and quartzite, and if you find, then lava.

Geologists could focus on the professional names of the breeds, but for a beginner it is usually just a collection of obscure names and nothing more. We will briefly describe which additions are not suitable for placement in the aquarium and why.

• Stones found near mines for the extraction of any ore are not suitable. Even a small admixture of such minerals can be harmful to pets.
• Radiation and pesticides also adversely affect the health of the inhabitants of the aquarium. You are unlikely to go to the zone of radiation pollution, but you should not collect material in the vicinity of the fields.
• Any strong odor indicates that the stone emits volatile substances.. Without understanding, you can not be sure that it is good for fish.
• The specimen should not include obvious metal streaks or have traces of rust. Metals are in principle undesirable for fish, especially when it comes to iron and heavy metals. For the same reason, you can never use pieces of ore, because you will encounter the extinction of pets, which is difficult to explain otherwise.
• The bright color of the stone usually indicates that it incorporates some relatively rare chemical elements.Again, do not experiment, not knowing how this will affect the ecosystem.
• Soft and easily crumbling pebbles are most likely of calcareous origin. Such a mineral has a large amount of calcium and is easily dissolved, and therefore will inevitably lead to a skew of acidity and hardness of aquarium moisture. The only exception to the rule is perhaps lime tufa, which is acceptable in those aquariums that use alkaline water.
• Coarse pebbles are not welcome, especially if its surface cannot be called homogeneous and smooth - these are ideal circumstances for the fish to hurt or even get stuck. For the same reason, it is undesirable to use too large and heavy cobblestones.

The basic principles for choosing rocks and minerals have already been described above, so it remains to consider those aspects that have not yet been affected by our attention. The choice of stones is a difficult task and from the above we understood which ones can and cannot be chosen, but did not understand how to do this.

Even selecting beautiful stones that fit the above requirements in all respects, you will not be able to adequately design a pond the first time. Experienced aquarists advise, first, to clearly imagine in your head what final result you would like to get, and only then proceed to collecting or purchasing material.

If you collect minerals yourself, never focus only on those samples that are the best in your understanding. Practice shows that stones are always needed more than it seemed at first - some simply do not fit in shape and do not "fall" into place, and therefore need to be replaced by smaller ones.

Agree, it will not work out very well if you brought natural "jewelry" from distant seas and you just have nothing to replace an unsuitable copy, and without it the whole concept of composition is destroyed. For this reason, the pebbles are divided into “suitable” and “inappropriate” already directly above the aquarium.

Shop stones attract many beginner aquarists because they do not need to invent anything - they were initially selected so as not to harm the fish, they have probably already been processed and can be used immediately. In addition, pretty creative compositions have often been made out of them, thanks to which your aquarium may not be original, but it will certainly turn out to be beautiful.

However, there is a category of people who does not understand how you can pay for what is literally lying under your feet. As we already understood, independent collection of stones is not prohibited, but you can’t just collect cobblestones on the street and lower them into the water - this puts you at risk of introducing into the ecosystem a lot of different infections, which will then be very difficult to get rid of.

To avoid this, you need to know how to properly process the collected material. Recall just in case that only certain types of minerals are suitable for immersion, a preliminary check with a drop of vinegar is also desirable. But even if an instance has passed such a selection, it is still not ready.

Before moving to the aquarium, he must undergo the following procedures.

• The washing up. It is carried out only under running water of good pressure, which can effectively wash away dirt and even harmful microorganisms. Do not overdo it - only water is used for washing, but soap and detergents are unacceptable, because you cannot know what chemical reactions will provoke their interaction with the breed.
• Cleaning. Even a powerful jet of water does not completely remove all the dirt, so the aquarist should use a brush and walk thoroughly over the entire surface, including the cracks.Not only dirt, but also any plaque, the remains of lichens and mosses, and even more insects - all this must be removed.
• Boiling. That's where opinions differ - some say that you need to simmer for 3 hours, while others also need 20 minutes or even calcination in the oven for the same time. Another alternative is isolated in the form of drying in the fresh air for 14-15 days, but this method raises certain doubts.
• Cooling If you still prefer to heat treatment of any kind as faster and more efficient, do not rush to throw the hot mineral into the water. It is advisable to bring it to such a temperature that is characteristic of water in the aquarium so as not to cause a sharp temperature drop in the ecosystem.

Even the most diligent beginner hardly knows how to decorate the aquarium with his own hands so that the design comes out beautiful, unobtrusive and stylistically correct. It’s not necessary to come up with unique compositions from scratch - You can make the design in one of the styles popular in our time, using vivid examples of finished aquariums.

• Dutch style - This is a full flower bed with plants, only located under water. There are always a lot of green spaces in such an aquarium, but they are strictly sorted by height, color and size, do not climb onto “alien” territory and completely occupy “their own”. In this case, it is worth putting pebbles and shell rock as an imitation of the paths between the flower beds.

• Japanese style also imitates terrestrial landscapes, but of a completely different kind. Here, the stones are used not as a substrate, but as Iwagumi - a typical composition of Japanese stone gardens.

• Pseudo-style - This is for everyone who is not ready to spend money on registration and too mess with it. This version of the aquarium requires a minimum of effort and money, and therefore it looks quite simple, but the same pebbles and shell rock, as well as granite, will be quite appropriate here.

• Natural style rightly considered one of the most difficult in terms of reproduction, only the most avid aquarists resort to it, and even then not all. The meaning of this approach is to recreate the design of a certain section of the bottom of the reservoir with maximum (sometimes literally photographic!) Accuracy. Often an imitation of a specific reservoir such as Lake Malawi is done.

One of the typical problems that occur after the aquarium has been decorated with stones is injuring the fish on sharp edges or due to being stuck in cracks between large minerals. Such consequences are especially likely if you breed active animals that love to swim at high speeds.

You must understand that if this has already happened once, then in the future the situation will probably happen again. If you value the life and health of your pets, you will probably have to sacrifice your design, redoing it to a lesser risk of injury or fundamentally changing it.

Another point, often not causing a proper timely reaction for beginners, is the appearance of a raid on the stones, which was not at the time of the dive. The color of the neoplasm is usually black, green or whitish, although theoretically it can be almost anything. Its appearance indicates that in your artificial pond algae are planted, which in the vast majority of cases are considered weeds and interfere with the normal development of other species.

The reasons for the appearance of plaque include too dirty water, which is caused by rare changes or overpopulation of the aquarium, insufficient or excessive lighting, excess or lack of fertilizer, and inadequately high temperature. Plaque is removed by brushing or brushing off natural algae enemies.so that the situation does not happen again, you need to balance the bio-balance and create normal conditions under which weeds will not have a chance.

In critical situations, you will have to go to the pet store for special means, which, being potentially dangerous for the fish, remain the last way to solve the problem.

The video below will tell you how to choose stones for the aquarium.