rock placement

[gearhead]

i was just wondering if it was ok to have rock resting against the walls of your tank. i want to add some rock but it will end up resting against the back wall of my tank. i don't want to come home to cracked tank. thanks.

[gearhead]

btw, it is glass aquarium (75g AGA).

[phil519]

should be fine. The issue is not the glass breaking (although I guess if you strike it hard enough anything can happen). The issue is really appearance and also whether you can get at the algae that will inevitably grow on the glass. If you can't reach it with a mag float or a snail can't get there - then you'll just have to be resigned to the fact that algae will grow. That's okay for any part of the tank that isn't viewable.

Hth

[Hooked on Salt]

I've had mine stacked against the back wall of the glass and haven't had any problems. IMO it's better that way because the wall adds stability. My Tang and snails keep everything pretty clean too.

[gearhead]

thanks. i'm not worried about the algae growing there - it would be completely hidden. i guess i was just worried about 1 small point of rock creating a stress point (if that is possible). man i worry about some strange stuff sometimes. :worried:

[spe934]

Some of my LR is agianst the back wall of my tank too (due to limiations on 55 aquascaping :( ) If you are really worried about it, you can always cut a piece of plexiglas to fit against the back of your tank, slide it in, and continue as normal. Just an idea.

[Scuba Oz]

Supporting it on the glass will not hurt the glass as mentioned already, but does make it hard to clean if its in a high view area, have any pics on the rock and glass in question? Maybe we can help with a scape idea for you

[Mr.Lloyd]

Make sure you do not cut off water flow as that is what makes your live rock function as it should.

[plancton]

I agree with Mr lloyd. I read a book called the reef aquarium by julian sprung and some other guy. In there it shows some diagrams of how can live rock must be placed, and how can powerheads must be placed as well to get good filtration.

It advices against stocking rocks against the walls, the reason is: algae will be formed in the back where the magnet has no acces. Well that is not a problem since all of us have coraline algae on the back of the aquarium which looks nice.

But it advice of hair algae and other kinds of algae growing on the back of the rock, this algae will grow, and will show up and it is nasty and it reproduces fast, in fact you could get something that could crash your tank like slime algae.

Other thing is that excrement, detrius, and other stuff accumulates there, which will contaminate your tank by raising the amonia levels.

You would form a dead spot, which is bad, for the previous mentioned reason, plus the water circulation in the tank would not be very good, as if you didn't stock the rocks against the wall.

I would advice you to have a 2 inch separation from the wall, and you could have a powerhead on side of the tank pointing at that separation, and another one on the other side of the tank a bit infront of the rock placement, this would create a circular water flow in your tank which is just perfect for filtration and eliminating deathspots.

It's also a good idea to have this separation on the back for the reason that perhaps you can't see it, but fish will actually have the same proportion of space to swim, will have more places to hide, and will have less percentage of seen each other often, thus reducing agression.