It reminds me of dragon stone but black, I love it!


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Beautiful stone indeed. Where did you get it?

Will be nice to see how that looks once you get it setup. Good deal on getting it cleaned up for use.

Lovely pieces of rock. Will look good in the scape.

I would also get a couple bottles of hydrogen peroxide and poor it in holes and see if it starts bubbling out of holes. There could be a lot of old packed in organics that need dissolved in there.

Thanks, I bought it at my LFS. Luckily, they sell by the pound and it weighs about half as much as normal lava rock! It was one big chunk but it was way too big for the tank it's going in so I broke it into 4. Might even break it up a bit more depending on how everything fits when I 'scape it. I've never seen anything quite like it so I thought it was a good find. Should really make the colors in the tank pop with coal slag substrate and a black background.

Thanks everyone for the tips and encouragement. I'm glad I didn't scrap them!

Well? How'd it all turn out?

Rock looks like it will be fine. Project is on hold for a while with deer season starting tomorrow. I’ll update once I get it all set up sometime after the rut


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Deer season. Glad to see another hunter on here.


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not sure ilugols iodine would be good, or particularly effective as it is a metal compound/ antimicrobial can effect thymus function, metabolism, etc.

cal/mag salts some of which can become insoluble in vinegar and sloooowly dissolvable in water are hard to remove sometimes.

Update: I put the rock and blasting sand in my spec V a few weeks ago and started with fishless cycle, with plans to fully plant a few days later. Planting was pushed back when some unforeseen stuff came up but I continued on with the cycle, knowing I wont be ready to fully plant for a while.

Since then, I had some issues with careless ammonia dosing, discussed here: https://www.plantedtank.net/forums/8...illing-bb.html

On 10/22, after I did 100% water change with Shrimp King GH+/KH+, I put some hornwort, a couple anubias, and a few random stems I had in other tanks into the Spec to help control the nitrates until I'm ready to fully plant. The anubias and hornwort will likely come back out in favor of buces, anubias nana petite, and others. I have some salvinia minima on order that should be here Monday or Tuesday, as well.

After the water change on 10/22, my parameters were as follows:
PH: 7.2
TDS: 155
GH: 7-8
KH: 1-2
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate; ~5

I continued to dose ammonia to 2-3ppm daily until 10/30 and tested everything again:
PH: <=6.2
TDS: 185
GH: 7-8
KH: 0-1
Ammonia: ~1 (16 hours after dosing to 3ppm)
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 60ish??? (Hard to tell between higher numbers on the test kit)

After I bought the Shrimp King GH+/KH+ I was reading the documentation and thought it was weird that their formula would have such a low KH since it's designed for Neos and they can handle quite a bit higher KH, making PH more stable. I have a feeling the low KH of the water I mixed on 10/22 led to the PH going down but I'm not sure what would account for the KH going down.

I plan on doing another big water change on Saturday and am considering ways to raise the KH in the tank.... or should I just keep using the same salts and plan on getting shrimp that prefer lower PH and KH? I planned on doing Neos but I'm flexible. I could easily get my RO water to GH 5 and KH 0-1 with this salt formula. Thoughts?

Edit: I also just considered that I'm topping off with RO water with a lower PH than my remineralized water. I guess that would slowly lower the PH in the tank. Should I be adding something to my top-off water to raise the PH?

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Late to this thread, but here is how I clean my rocks with sediment in them:
Put on my rain gear and face shield.
Use a pressure washer and blast the rock, holding it with either pliers or a thick rubber glove
Then gently boil the rock with the lid on in case they explode
Then I leave it in RO water overnight and check the TDS