Hollow artificial coral insert decorations

[Mr.Lacy]

New to the forum.My last aquarium was about 25 yrs ago.It was a 110 Oceanic drilled with corner overflow(used as prefilter with foam block,drip plate and cartridge filter,DIY welded plexiglass wet dry(15 gallon bio-balls) Iwaki 30rlt,PEP(NuClear) canister filter and 25 wattUV.Fish only,angels,butterflys and of course some clown fish.I wish I never sold that tank but after a divorce and three moves(the last a 2nd floor apt.) it became a pain.Anyhow retired now and starting back.I have a 75 and 40 that will be set up similar to my old tank as I never had any problems to speak of.The problem I am going to have is with decorations.I had dead corals,stag elkhorn and blue ridge,25 years ago available and reasonably priced not so now.Soooo I brought a couple of really nice looking Instant Reef artificial inserts.My worry is these things are large and hollow.I'm thinking that at some time the water with no movement will go stagnant,leach out and kill everything.I feel I have two options,one drill a lot of holes or find something(foam,cement) and fill them up.Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.Oh and yea there will be skimmers.

[bribo12]

Are you not putting live or dry rock in there? Just artificial coral inserts? The stuff you used to use is a pretty outdated way to setup a tank even a fowlr one. But if you do just stick to the artificial inserts I’d get enough power heads to angle flow so you can minimize dead spots.

[Mr.Lacy]

Thanks for the reply.These are fish only tanks,no live rock.The return from the Iwaki pump provides water circulation so there will be no powerheads in the tank.My concern is the Instant Reef artificial coral inserts are hollow,not a large solid piece like a rock.Imagine taking a 5 gallon bucket and turning it upside down in a tank,letting it fill with water and leaving like that.At some point and time,if left alone the water inside will become stagnant.I was thinking about drilling several 10mm holes in the lnserts but then there would be some detritus that would find its way in.What I'm leaning toward is to fill these things up with some sort of foam or concrete mix that people use to make their own base rock.

[Sniperhank]

Every tank has dead spots. A powerhead can solve that issue if it becomes one. I wouldn't be worried about it at all until it showed itself as a problem. The holes would provide flow through that rock, but who knows if it will be a problem for anything outside of some cyano?

[Mr.Lacy]

Yea I guess it should not be a problem,Instant Reef has probably sold hundreds of these things and if there was a problem with the design it would probably be all over the net or you tube somewhere.Thanks for the replies guys,thats one less thing for me to worry about and I can get back to setting up my tanks.

[FishRFriends1]

I think pond skimmers could be a huge help, the pump inside the pond skimmer draws water into it and also water is filtered through a mesh net in it.