Habitat - Indoor :: Can't find smooth rocks in store

[MerryMenagerie]

So I am ordering them. Anyone have a guess how many lbs of smooth river rock would be needed to cover the bottom of a 55 gallon long tank? They come in 15lb bags...

[steve]

Why do you want to order so much? Did you look at floral stores? Dollar stores? The last time I bought some was at an IKEA.

[devilduck]

Also try craft stores, or if you can wait til spring most gardening and landscape supply places will carry them.

[Kansasslider]

Why use rocks? Use sand. Trust me cleaning rocks is a pain!

[penelope]

It took about a wheel barrow full when I put the large (3" +/- diameter) in my 55 gallon.
A lot of rock! and if you accidentally drop one as you are pulling them out to clean - whoops!
they do look nice, but I would wait until you can get them at the local garden store - then if you buy too little you can get more...and it will save a bundle on shipping

[MerryMenagerie]

Are the ones at floral stores the same? I thought it would be less expensive to get them from Home Depot, since the craft/floral stores carry much smaller bags. We unfortunately don't have an Ikea near us, I wish we did.

These are the ones I was looking at: http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/sto ... RsXsmdfIRI

Is sand really easier to clean? I have never had sand in a tank before, this is my first go at a real aquarium.

[ljapa]

Is sand really easier to clean?

I started with the polished stone. All the waste ended up between the rocks and water changes just stirred it up as I tried to siphon off as much as I could.

After reading the thread on sand here, I switched. Couldn't be happier. None of the stuff that settles on the bottom of the tank gets between the grains. More of it ends up sucked into the filter input and what doesn't is much easier to siphon up without creating a mess.

Washing and prepping the sand is a pain, but it's a one time event. I used pool filter sand after reading that it had less dust and was easier to clean.

[Kansasslider]

Sand is real easy to clean. There are some good videos on you tube check them out before you buy rocks. Some people use pool filter sand and that's fine but there is also a ton of aquarium sand.I have white sand in mine.

[MerryMenagerie]

I'll check them out. It just seems like it would make a huge mess.

[Kansasslider]

No mess.

[MerryMenagerie]

Can you link me to some good videos? I tried looking and couldn't find any that really showed what to do. I do have a siphon.

[ljapa]

Can you link me to some good videos? I tried looking and couldn't find any that really showed what to do. I do have a siphon.

Here's one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti2PXBY_ffI

You can see that it's pretty easy to pull debris off of sand withouth siphoning off sand.

[Kansasslider]

I prefer cleaning it like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjXhcoJs ... ata_player