Tank Ornaments

[wetdog]

whilst in the 'pound shop' yesterday i saw some green apple sized ornaments, that would look great in the tank. they are made of terracotta, with a small hole in the bottom. i have expanded the hole with a view to using them as caves. but once opened up they have a fairly strong and unpleasent odour, similar to a moth ball smell.

do you think these will be safe?
i have considered soaking them in de-chlorinated water for a few days.

ta,
mick.

 

[waterdrop]

Who knows? My personal take would be to not risk it if something had an odor like that! You could try just soaking one in a jar of water for a week and smell test it after that. Another test would be KH/GH before after water tests on a jar of your plain tap water and the jar with the decoration in it for a week. But neither of those, smell or water hardness, would necessarily get at the problem of the material containing something that might be toxic to your fish and just was too hard to test for.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

The mothball smell is a dead give away. Do not place that ornament into any tank that you want to have fish in.