teknofilechik

What's the best way to go about cleaning beach rocks for a freshwater tank? I was thinking toothpaste, because it seems to clean just about everything, but will residue toothpaste after rinsing the rocks be harmful to the fish?

zeddy

my sugestion is to boil and scrub with a clean brush, don't use cleaners of any kind. also make sure that there is no metel deposits in the rock that can leach into your tank

joy613

One thing you might want to do is clean them with vinegar, if it bubbles and fizzes then you know those rocks will cause the water chemistry to change and best not used. Then boil them.

COBettaCouple

Some rocks will leech minerals or alter pH, so you'll want to consider what you add from 'nature'.

zeddy

try them in a bucket and moniter peramiters for a while

teknofilechik

I'm not throwing them right into my tank with living fish, I'm going to put them into the cycling 75 gallon and monitor the levels. If something goes wrong, I'll take them out, let everything re-adjust, and put them in one by one. I just don't have enough space for them to hide, and beach rocks are cheap ^_^.

Thanks for the advice!

zeddy

another thing to try is a gas fireplace store they always have slabs of slate that are very thin and quite cheap