Rock on top of sand, or rock on bottom then sand?

[Anonymous]

Just wanted to poll.

Do you put your rock on the tank bottom and then pour in sand or crushed coral? Or do you lay down the substrate and then place your rock on top?

And what is your reasoning for your method?


I put the rock down on the tank bottom because it is more stable that way, but I'm thinking about a pistol shrimp for my 10 gallon and the shrimp will want to construct burrows. Since the rock can't be piled that high in such a small tank anyway, I think stability is less of an issue than in a large tank with a 2 foot high rock structure.

 

[Anonymous]

What I did is I cut little 1.25" pieces of PVC and used those to put my rock on, made sure it was stable, then put sand around that so that there was some "space" under the rock that things can crawl through, or if they burrow they won't topple/shift anything.

 

[Nautilus1]

I think if you add the rocks first and then add the sand it will create a detritus trap betweebn the rock and sand and the bottom of the tank. This will happen with putting the rocks on the sand but there would be less areas to have detritus collect. I put my sand in first and then the rocks on top. I let pistol shrimps create space below the rocks for flow like only they can.

 

[fyrefysh]

Rock is more structurally sound when placed on the bottom. But I would say in a 10 gallon tank, it won't make much of a difference. Nautilus, I disagree about the detritus build up, but I suppose "to each his own".

 

[das75]

Did similiar to sfsuphysics on my first tank. Made boxes of eggcrating about 3" high by zip typing pieces together, placed rock on those then added sand. Rock was stable and didn't bury the bottom 4" in sand.