Heavy Metal Guppies

[wolf]

Aren't most commericially produced tank ornamets made out of a variety of poorly painted plastics (sorry about the alliteration, it was completely unintentional) that tend to outgas a variety of nasty things anyway?

That little diver guy can't be good for the fish.

[monster]

Originally Posted by wolf

Aren't most commericially produced tank ornamets made out of a variety of poorly painted plastics (sorry about the alliteration, it was completely unintentional) that tend to outgas a variety of nasty things anyway?

That little diver guy can't be good for the fish.

A lot of the ornaments are nasty ceramic with who knows what type of paint on, but one would assume that the paints do not kill fish or someone would have noticed? Plastic is generally pretty inert, I thought it was usually painted with other plastics? Plastic ornaments do not feature in either of our other tanks, so I've never really considered it. I've made some ceramic tank ornaments and glazed them with food-safe lead-free glazes. We figured that as those glazes are dinnerwear safe and OK to dishwash, they'd also be OK for fish. Pehaps that was wrong? The fish stopped dying after the first few years, though, so maybe the effect wears off?


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Aliantha, what ornaments did your friend experiment with and what did they discover?

What type of fish did your family breed? Our second pet crayfish was "pregnant" when we got her, and two of her offspring are still alive (in separate tanks) four years later, but that's as close as we've come to breeding anything fishy.