[christinamac]

I want to decorate my 3 gallon cube with small lava rocks. They help keep the water clean, look nice, and plants readily attach to them.

I want to pick and choose specific rocks, if possible, because they are for decoration. I only need a few so I don't want to buy a whole bag of them from somewhere. I checked my local pet stores and they didn't have what I am looking for.

I appreciate any suggestions you may have.

 

[Olivia27]

Petco's website has some. Gotta warn you though they're totally not Betta friendly. One member just showed pics of how horribly torn their Betta's fins become due to the lava rock. I bought one online moons ago and immediately returned it when I first touched it. So yeah. Makes a nice decoration for other fishes though

 

[christinamac]

Can you file the sharp edges down to make them safe for Bettas?

 

[jess32247]

i have a couple lava rocks that i got from petco in my bettas tanks, they're rough but don't feel sharp enough to tear fins imo. i really like how they look so i'll be keeping them in the tank, but i will keep an eye on them after reading seren's post above. i only have one medium sized rock in three of my divided 10 gallon tanks so they're not brushing up against it constantly, though not sure how a betta would do with a tank full of them so be wary.

you kind of can file them down, but they're not the hardest material so you could also chip away any edges that are too sharp.

 

[christinamac]

Well I found out that you can get a bunch of lava rocks at any hardware store. People use them in grills and sometimes for landscaping. After feeling the lava rocks at the store, I decided against using them with my Betta. I found some smooth black river rocks I like instead.