bomber822

ok i am probably going to get a 55gal tank and i need some idea's on decorations and i mostly want to do DIY(do it your self) stuff to it to make it cheaper and can you tell me what substrate would be the best for a 55gal i like the look of sand better but that would probably be a pain in the neck to clean. i have a 10gal with sand and the siffin vacuum thingy just sucks up the sand and doesnt even clean it. I am thinking of buying lava rock you know the stuff for the grill and getting silicom and just glueing it together to make a huge decoration my cousin did it and it looks so cool really it does and it was ONLY A 6 DOLLAR PROJECT to do if anyone is interested in that. my cousin is really clever but i am not and i want my tank to at lease look half as good as his. also since i will have a lot more room for fish i want to get some fish and if you have any ideas on what kind of fish look cool but aren't aggressive please tell me i want a coolie loach but i never see them anywhere not even at petsmart and i love petsmart they have everything EVERYTHING i have never been to petco because there isnt any around here but thats ok because people say that the people that work at petco dont know anything. i am probably going to do my own backround like i did for my 35gal because it looks good i got a huge peace of paper and cut it to the size of my tank and just put newspaper under it and splattered paint all over it also i want to get some drift wood from the lake at my camp and boil it and put that in there to thanks for the ideas and thanks for listening to me haha this was along forum

sjlchgo

First advise...don't buy fish from Petsmart!! If you want a loach then the lava rock my not be the way to go. It's very sharp.

sirdarksol

Breathe, Bomber (when I read stuff without punctuation, I read it as if the person wasn't breathing between sentences. I was chuckling by the end of your post. )

Anyway, I agree that lava rock is not the best for kuhli loaches. They like to wedge themselves into tight places, and lava rock would be like a rasp on their skin.
They do like places to hide, though, so driftwood and/or rocks are going to be good. I've found a few pieces of driftwood at pretty reasonable prices on eBay and Aquabid. Be sure that whatever you get isn't treated with toxins, and that the rock is neutral and metal-free.

I've never had a problem cleaning my sand. Not sure if it's a difference in vacuums or in the sand. I'm using the black stuff they sell on Drs Foster and Smith (Caribbean Moon or Tahitian Moon or something like that). With kuhlis, the smaller/softer the substrate, the better. One member swears by pool filter sand for her kuhlis. My tank with kuhlis has EcoComplete, which is similar to potting soil.