How much is too much

[1zz-fe ce|ica]

Well, I just stumbled upon this site and just registered. Been doing some reading and a lot of learning. Just building up my knowledge on some basic things.

Well on to my main question:

What is the maximum amount of rocks that can be placed in a 75 gallon aquarium? It has all glass sides and bottom if that helps any.

Lets say it has the eggcrates on the bottom and it is full of water and disregarding the type of rock (like whether or not it is good for the fish). I know rocks have different weights but lets just assume the rocks are the average rocks you find in a garden? or well i don't know any specific names of rocks but not the kind of rocks are really light in weight. I know its vague but maybe its enough.

So is there a weight limit?

Like does it matter b/c the weight of the rocks offsets the weight of the water? like can you fill a whole tank up to the top with rocks and it will still be able to hold the weight?

How about some suggestions also. What kind of fish would you put in a 75 gallon tank? pictures would be great as i'm not too familar with fish names.

Its my parents tank and they don't really care for the fish too much. I mostly do all the work and would like some fish that don't take too much work. From what i can remember we had oscars and then cichlids. don't remember how many years we had the oscars (they got huge) but the cichlids about 5 years. (is that short/long).

we have a Ehiem type 2215 and a penguin 170 for filtration. I don't know anything about this, but i guess i may do better in the filtration forum about it.

Thanks for all the help.

*if this is in the wrong forum i'm sorry i'll try to use the rit one next time*

 

[modernhamlet]

The short answer is yes, there's a limit, but it's a lot. I have a 75g All-Glass aquarium with around 250 lbs of rocks in it. I'll probably be adding more. Unless you're planning to stack rocks all the way to the top of the tank, then you'll probably be fine. You have to remember that 250 lbs of rock is displacing probably 100 lbs of water. A 75g with no rocks is going to have 700 lbs or so of water in it anyway, so you're really not increasing the weight so much.

Definitely use the eggcrate if you're adding larger rocks or stacking them. Pressure points are where you are much more likely to run into problems.

Then again, there's really no need for that much rock unless you plan to keep African Rift Lake Cichlids (like mbuna).

Do you know what fish are in the tank currently?

What else are you looking for in your fish other than ease of care?

 

[1zz-fe ce|ica]

well I was just wondering about the rocks. I doubt I will be adding rocks all the way to the top. I wanted to know if there was actually a limit.

There are currently no fish in the tank. The tank was filty so i decided that since there are no fish i'd do a through cleaning. Scrubed the rocks and filtered through the gravel and under the underground filter to get most of the stuff out.

Filled it up with water, added the chlorine remover stuff and just let the filters run as they were. Its been running for more then a week now. I didn't read much about cycling, but i was hoping that since i didn't clean out the filters or anything that the bacteria would build up enough with what was left. Or am i wrong ? I still have to pick up the water testing equipment.

I'm kind of leaning toward setting up the tank for cichlids, but i don't know where to start with that because i find sooO much information on all different kinds. theres a lot of talk about which ones work well together, how many to put in a tank. Its hard to gather the information without studying it day in day out.

 

[Tempestuousfury]

to the forum. Introduce yourself in the newbie section.

You have to remember the weight and you have to be 100% sure the rocks won't tip even after cementing down because it could crack your tank.

 

[yhbae]

If you want to add lots of rocks, then you should cover the entire bottom with egg crates (as mentioned already), stack up your rocks, make sure the whole sturcture is really stable, then add your substrates. This way, if you end up with species that likes to dig (almost all mbuna likes to dig, and so do many lake Tang species), you are not going to end up with a cracked tank (as mentioned above).