Keep Your Aquarium Decorations from Corrupting Your Water

Anything you put in your fish tank can have harmful effects if it’s not properly prepared.  Aquarium driftwood, rocks, and substrate are some aquarium decorations that should be thoroughly prepared before introducing them into your tank.  A little preparation before you add them to your tank can save you a whole lot of trouble later.

Preparing Aquarium Substrate

Cleaning your substrate is simple.  Add it to a bucket of water, stir it around with a stick, change the water, and repeat until you see completely clean water.  Regular old tap water should work fine in most cases.  You can always use boiling water to remove stubborn grime.  It is not necessary to use any type of cleaner.

Another item to consider with regard to preparing substrate is adding nutrients.  Adding nutrients to your aquarium is necessary if you are going to include plants.  Basically, you sprinkle the nutrients over a layer of substrate.  Next you should work it into the substrate.  Finally you should cover the nutrient layer with another thin layer of substrate.

Preparing Aquarium Rocks

Do your aquarium rocks fizz?  What’s this all about you might ask?  A quick test to check the whether or not your aquarium rocks are chemically suitable for your tank is to pour vinegar over them.  If they fizz contain harmful chemicals, if not your rocks are fine.

You’ll then want to scrub your rocks with a bristle brush to clean them of dirt.  This will keep your fish tank from clouding unnecessarily.  Cleaning your aquarium rocks will also bring their colors to life.  With a little elbow grease, you can bring a dingy rock to a beautiful aquarium decoration.

Preparing Aquarium Wood

Aquarium driftwood and other woods can quickly turn you water color to a brown mess if it is not properly prepared.  Sometime this is done before your purchase it at the store, sometime not.  Either way, you’ll want to test your aquarium driftwood by running it through the first step of this process at the very least.

Preparing your wood is easy.  Add it to a bucket of water and make sure it is completely submerged.  You can put a rock on top of it to hold it down.  Leave it alone for at least a couple of days until the water has turned orange or brown.  Next you should replace the dirty water with fresh and let it sit again for a couple of days.  You’ll want to repeat this process until you water is clear after the woods sits for a couple of days.  This may take 1-2 weeks to completely remove the tannins from the wood.

Have you had any trouble setting up decorations?