I'm trying to come up with a way to re-do my 80gal bowfront. I currently have a thing gravel bottom and lots of big flat rocks with some rounder rocks all stacked up. I also have a couple larger pieces of drift wood & some sponge filters but for now we'll just try to focus on the rocks since they make up the bulk of my decoration & hiding places. I've had this tank set-up for many years now and the outgoing 55gal was set up in the same manner for probably about a decade. I basically went to my local landscape outfit and got a lot of larger flat rocks & some round ones and just stacked them in a manner that looked alright. The problem is that over time they will settle and fall and end up in places that I didn't put them. I had an idea to take them out, silicone them the way I want them and then put them back in like 2 or 3 piles (one large stack would be obscenely heavy) but this presents a couple of problems 1) I have a cichlid/loach/pleco tank & there are lots of species of various sizes & temperaments and the concern is that in the days it took the silicone to dry completely and put them back I'd have a lot of eaten fish 2) if I'm going to go through all this effort why use the same heavy stones? The thought went to some sort of facsimile or synthetic 'stone' that was some sort of polymer or something that's fish safe over long periods of time. I also don't want to spend too much money so I'm looking for ideas here to update my tank w/o breaking the bank.
To give you an idea here's a crappy picture of what I'm working with now:
To give you an idea here's a crappy picture of what I'm working with now:
