limestone in aquarium

so i used a 3 inch piece of limestone in my 29 gallon as a frag rock. Will this affect levels a lot. My family is getting on me saying that 2 thousand dollars of livestock will go down the drain. this is what is in there

Black clown
Cryptic Sixline
Blue Mandarin
Rainfordi's Goby
Guppy (dont ask)
cynaria coral
xenia
zoanthids
mushrooms
Kenyan tree coral
aussie acan
Clean up Crew
Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp And last but not least
A Clam

 

Reefs.org: Where Reefkeeping Begins on the Internet - Limestone as a Live Rock Alternative

it doesn't sound like a good idea, but when you google it, seems like alot of people do it!

 

Well, the majority of the eastern coastline of Mexico is limestone LOL. I wouldn't do an entire tank in it because it's not very porous and is heavy, and I'd want to know where it came from so I'd have a better chance of knowing what else might be in it besides limestone.

 

Guppy?

 

Limestone is CaCO3 which is the same as aragonite (CaCO3) just a slightly different crystal structure so it 'shouldn't' make a difference in that regard.

As was mentioned above though, limestone is typically much denser and does not offer much in the way of biological filtration but if you are just using it as frag plugs then it shouldn't matter much.

The major difference is that Limestone is typically much older than typical reef rock and is located in more landlocked regions (The midwest is almost all limestone from ancient oceans) so it has a lot more time to get impurities in it. Impurities can be natural like various metals that leach through the rock or it can be from polutants (fertilizer and pesticides etc).

So if it is clean it shouldn't be a problem but i would be sure it is clean before using it. You may be better off (for peace of mind) to just use some rubble.

 

ok so i will tell the guppy story. So i wanted to breed saltwater fish but first i figured i would start practicing feeding methods on live bearers. So i soon had guppy fry. After a couple of months I gave the parents back to the store and neglected the fry nursery. And when i was taking the nursery down i saw one last guppy. So i plopped it into my reef display as food but it was to big to be eaten. The salinity was so high in the nursery it barely went up if at all when i put the guppy in the reef. It has been living since so i just left it in there. So now you know the story of the guppy.

 

cool! I have been toying with the idea of plopping a black molly in my tank.

 

I would be careful, as mentioned above it could be full of impurities. Lime stone is a sedimentary rock and so is full of all sorts of "impurities" (would take way to long to describe the process of the formation of sedimentary rock, I was a joint major in geology and biography in university). Could be any number of traces of metals in it and other things not good for our tanks. I wouldn't risk it in my tank, but it is up to you. Just make sure you do some reading on it before you leave it in there.

 

I have kept mollies in salt water, they actually are great at devouring algae.

 

I've done the mollies myself and still think they're great reef fish.

But on topic,i live ontop of a giant limestone deposit which is actively mined,this question was brought up in a thread a year or so ago and i found out theres pros and cons to using limestone for liverock,mine being mined is prolly much cleaner (metals,silicas,etc),but yes surface limestone can leech.Also found out it is very rich in magnesium (big plus),but the density of it isn't generally porus enough to grow the proper low oxygen dentrifying bacteria (anarobic or something like that ,somebody correct my spelling please) that lives deep in the rock.