Making caves with lava rock

[anteatergoanna]

Hi all, I would like to make some caves out of lava rock. Firstly, can I put lava rock in my aquarium, and what affect, if any, would it have on my water parameters? Has anyone made structures from lava rock? If so could you post a picture, so that I could get some ideas? Really not sure how to go about this, would I use aq safe silicon or supa glue? Thanks


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[Mebbid]

Firstly, yes you can add lava rock to your tank and it shouldn't have any effect on your parameters. To make aquascapes with it just stack it in designs that look nice. You can get pretty big structures with stacking.

[elephantnose]

Make sure not to use real lava rock. Lawn and garden lava rock will be fine. I stacked a pile of it.


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[Luananeko]

Originally Posted by elephantnose

Make sure not to use real lava rock. Lawn and garden lava rock will be fine. I stacked a pile of it.


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What do you mean by "real" lava rock? The lawn and garden lava rocks are still "real" rocks... None of them are concrete shaped to look like lava rocks or anything.

And yes, lava rocks are actually beneficial to have. They promote anaerobic bacteria pockets for de-nitrification (help lower your nitrates). I have a pile of them in my shrimp tank. The shrimp love to forage on them and they're a good place for my moss to root and spread over.

[anteatergoanna]

Hi, thanks for the info...Masters sell it in large bags for $16, which I thought was pretty good. I have some PVC pipes in my tank, so wanted to do something to hide them a bit. I'm not interested in glueing sand all over them, so thought a lava rock structure would be good.
I also have a heap of Peacock Moss coming, so that would look nice....thanks for the tip.

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[elephantnose]

Originally Posted by Luananeko

What do you mean by "real" lava rock? The lawn and garden lava rocks are still "real" rocks... None of them are concrete shaped to look like lava rocks or anything.



And yes, lava rocks are actually beneficial to have. They promote anaerobic bacteria pockets for de-nitrification (help lower your nitrates). I have a pile of them in my shrimp tank. The shrimp love to forage on them and they're a good place for my moss to root and spread over.

Real lava rock meaning right from the volcano. These will contain harmful minerals. There was a thread about this and it ended up killing all of this guys fish.


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[Luananeko]

Originally Posted by elephantnose

Real lava rock meaning right from the volcano. These will contain harmful minerals. There was a thread about this and it ended up killing all of this guys fish.


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Right from the volcano is fine so long as it passes the vinegar test. There are different types of lava rock, some safe, some not. The ones used in garden/landscape places are the safe type, but they're no less real or different than those of the same type that you find on the volcano. Where else would they get them from ?