Egg crate really necessary?

Reef Aquarium & Tank Building Forum

Help Support Reef Aquarium & Tank Building Forum:

Bosco83

Bosco83

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 1, 2008
Messages
697
Location
Marysville, WA
I have been reading about putting egg crate under your rock on top of the glass and then putting sand down. It seems it's about 50/50 half the people do it and the other half say it's a bad idea and will cause nitrate issues from trapping stuff in the sand? Is it really a concern of cracking the glass the bottom of my tank is like 3/4" seems it would take a lot of force to break it.

Thanks,
Brian
 
Thanks I always like hearing (reading) your advice. Do you still put the rock in first? I have always just put my sand in and then kinda wiggled my base rocks until they hit the bottom to be secure.
 
With or without is fine. I use a piece in my sump for the LR I have in there. You could use a sheet of acrylic under the sand if your worried about it. You could even build acrylic rock racks that would be buried under the sand and hold your rocks just above the sand so that detritus isn't trapped there either.
 
Placing rocks first, allows you to pour sand around the rocks, resulting in a more stable foundation, for your rocks. This is most important, if you have sand sifting critters or critters that dig on your sand bed. I learned this the hard way, when I had a pistol shrimp that did a lot of tunneling, undermining some of my rocks, causing a collapse. I got very lucky. Half of my rocks fell against the front glass, in my old 75, but the glass didn't break!
 
I use it in my tank. because the bottom is usually tempered in aquariums I don't know if it will really make a difference as far as breakage of the glass but what it does and does very well is give the rock a stable foundation or better traction. if the rock is sitting on the glass even if its surrounded by sand it can still move or slide easily on the glass. the grid of the plastic allows the rock to grab something and not slide or move easy. Many people use some sort of supporting structure for the rocks to prevent them from falling or moving. better safe then sorry with all your hard work on the floor from an avalanche in the tank.
 
Last edited:
returnofsid said:
Placing rocks first, allows you to pour sand around the rocks, resulting in a more stable foundation, for your rocks...
Click to expand...

To add to this, another reason why you would put the rock in first and then pour in the sand afterwards is it prevents you from forming deadspots underneath your rock that you can't get to to clean your sand so waste would just settle there and degrade water quality and you would have no way of vacuuming it. The method of putting in the sand then pushing the rock down in it till it touches the glass is the way I use to do it when I ran a sandbed. So much easier to balance and stack rocks this way IMO and also doesn't leave much sand underneath the rocks to cause an issue.

On the eggcrate, if you look around, many people that run bare bottom tanks just sit their rocks on bare glass without any issues. Worse case would be if a rock fell over and landed on the glass, but other than that, I've never heard of anyone having a problem doing it this way although I always used white PVC board on the bottom of my bb tanks just to be safe and give it a better look. :)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Jesse_emel said:
Talk to NTSWIFT about not putting anything on the bottom of the tank during construction... or simply read post #43 here

http://www.reeffrontiers.com/f70/swiftys-265-gal-55438/index3.html
Click to expand...

That's a bit of an extreme scenario if you ask me. In this case, even if there were egg crate on th bottom of hte tank it probably would have broke. If you drop a 60 pound bucket of sand or 60 pound rock into your tank its going to break no matter what.

Ive been keeping tanks for 20 years and have never put anything into the bottom other than sand or gravel.

Also, FWIW, tempered glass is stronger and more resistant to breaking than standard glass. Thats why manufacturers use it on the bottoms of their larger tanks.
 
Thanks for all the replies everyone! I probably won't use it we will see how my aquascaping goes I'm really not looking forward to it.
 
I moved and changed stuff at least that many times in 6 months. This last time however I assembled the tank dry and before I glued the rock together I adjust things and let it sit for a few weeks to make sure I was happy with it. I haven't wanted or needed to change anything. I have taken a couple of rocks out that I had intentionally put in as place holders for where I knew I was going to put some coral.
 
Returnof sid: "LOL What happened to Matt is a fluke, and was in an acrylic tank. Had he had egg crate and dropped a bucket full of wet, live sand, the egg crate and the bottom of his tank, would have still broke...lol."

It's not a fluke at all, when i was setting up my 210 glass aquarium I dropped a 40 lb rock that was covered in slippery hairy mushrooms onto the bottom of the tank, the egg crate took the impact and only broke in a few spots. Had the egg crate not been there i hate to think what would have happened.

"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"

in other words that egg crate saved my Azz
 
That was my thoughts on it too. Many of the rocks in my 210aga are 40+ lb, its not so much the weight but the sudden impact of even a smaller rock if on a point or edge mite do it.

I've had two mishaps with tempered glass. One I was trying to break it not knowing it was tempered. I was beating on it with a 2 lb hammer and had it scored and sitting on a metal rod to break it. You would not believe how hard I was hitting it with the hammer before it broke. That is some amazingly strong stuff even for a 3/8 thick piece as long as your hitting it with a flat object like a hammer.

The other was with a 90 breeder. I was moving with the glass lids on it. The lid fell and the corner of the lid hit the bottom. Fortunately the glass lid broke and not the bottom.

The scary thing about tempered glass is sometime you get no warning it will just go. In my work I have herd stories of people just sitting in there kitchen and BAM the glass on the stove explodes and no one was near it or was even using it.
 
I've always added a layer of sand and then placed the rocks in position. With the sand in place I put the bottom rocks in position and then agitate them gently until I feel them touch bottom. I figure that with the rock resting on the bottom glass the sand should keep it from shifting position as I add more rocks to build my aquascape.

Mike
 
It's not clear to me how eggcrate could absorb the impact of a heavy item falling. It's not compressible, so it couldn't cushion the force of any impact. Also, it is not rigid enough to transfer the force of a small heavy object over a wider area (i.e. the eggcrate under a small heavy object would just bend). I find only the traction argument to be appealing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Derbird
Egg crate below sand?
2
Replies
22
Views
4K
Derbird
Derbird
Vandur
40g Breeder, Tank Build(s)
Replies
16
Views
14K
spieszak
spieszak
Maxx
ARID E18 reactor (Phosphate Control!!!)
Replies
16
Views
13K
Maxx
Maxx
MadMax
BRAND NEW Product: Controller for Protein Skimmers!
Replies
0
Views
3K
MadMax
MadMax
Q
Two Anemone Questions
Replies
4
Views
1K
Qburt
Q
Back
Top