Petrified Wood substrate?

[CClump]

Has anyone tried this?
I went out looking for big accent pieces and came back with tons of smaller shards that i think would look a lot better than bag gravel they out at the stores.
Most of the pieces are semi rounded off so im not worried about them hurting any fish. Any other for see able problems or anyone with pictures having already done it? This will be in a 72x24

 

[Will Hayward]

What kind of fish will you keep? It would rule out most catfish, corydoras, stingrays, loaches and similar fish. Plus any that are scaleless and those that dig.

How do you have enough shards to fill 12 square feet?

A cheap alternative would be 100-200 lbs of Silica sand which might cost 10-20$

 

[CClump]

the only bottom fish will be a clown knife. others are 2 jags and and possibly a shortbody fh
and i suppose shards are probably the wrong word to describe as that makes them sound sharp.
i do have enough to cover the bottom probably over an inch but will most likely just use it to cover a half inch or so.

 

[David K. Bradley]

Living in Arizona, we have many areas heavily saturated with petrified wood shards, pieces 1-3 in. in length and varying widths of 1/4 in. to 2 in.
They are nice to have, but I foresee a weight problem in the tank. Even though the weight is going to be evenly distributed, it's still going to be heavy on the bottom. More so than regular substrate used by most hobbists. As an example, petrified wood is folsilized trees and large plants done by the earths pressurized gravitational weight. We also have a rock called malipai (pronounced, mal-i-pie). Composed of direct iron magma flow from the center of the earth's core. The weight difference of these two type of rocks, both of them being the same size is at a ratio, of 2:1, petrified wood: malipai. malipai is a heavy heavy rock. a 6 x 8 x 12 inch malipai rock weighs in the neighbohood of 20 lbs. That would indicate a petrified wood rock of the same size would weigh close to 40 lbs.

Another factor maybe not looked at is, the bio waste from the fish and the ability of proper cleaning of the substrate. How esay and sensible with this be achieved?

Based on these above two factors, I personally would not use petrified wood for a substrate. I hope this helps with your decission making process.