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I'm considering adding Juwel 'Rock 450' backgrounds to the tank containing my Panaque nigrolineatus. But will she destroy it?

These aren't the ones made from expanded polystyrene, but from some sort of hard, plasticky foam a bit like cavity wall insulation. My worry is she has left scrape marks on the plastic components in the tank, and might strip the paint off the background, defeating the object of the exercise. Has anyone kept Panaque in a tank with a background of this type?

Cheers, Neale

You will probably find that after a while there are some noticable scratches. But it won't be a fast process, it will take years before you can see the scrapes from the outside of the tank [obvisouly, looking really closely during a water-change or some such will show them much sooner].

Alternatively, use an external backing [plastic, paper, or similar], and decorate the inside of the tank with plenty of wood and other things, so you don't really see the background as a "flat surface".

Have a look at my Rio400 tank, which is done up that way. Link in my signature.

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Mats

I also put the backgrounds for my tank on the outside, curved slightly to give a lot of depth to the tank.

Thanks for the comments. I do already have the black plastic background outside the tank. The problem is that my tank is heavily planted at the moment, and while she doesn't harm the plants directly, as she swims through stuff it all gets uprooted. And then there's all the wood chippings from the bogwood...! Any Panaque-owners will know what I'm talking about.

So I'm looking to create something with rocks rather than wood as the theme, and to use wood more sparingly, as a dietary supplement rather than the main decorative material.

Honestly though, if I wasn't so fond of her (had her about 15 years) I'd give her away: she makes decorating a tank more difficult than any fish I've ever owned.

Cheers, Neale

nmonks wrote:So I'm looking to create something with rocks rather than wood as the theme, and to use wood more sparingly, as a dietary supplement rather than the main decorative material.

Either you provide enough wood - and than you get exactly the same amound of pulverised wood, or you provide too little

You better find a way to accept the pulverised wood, in my eyes

I suspect it's a little more complex than this. The plastic filter boxes for example are 100% covered in tooth-marks, so she's obviously consuming some plastic as well as algae. She doesn't need to eat plastic, she eats it "accidentally".

So in a tank with lots of wood, some of the wood is digested and important, yes, but some is surely incidental. My hope is that by putting a couple of big bits of wood in the tank along with mostly rock and gravel, she'll eat the wood she needs, but otherwise leave the decor alone.

Cheers, Neale

Either you provide enough wood - and than you get exactly the same amound of pulverised wood, or you provide too little

nmonks wrote:So in a tank with lots of wood, some of the wood is digested and important, yes, but some is surely incidental. My hope is that by putting a couple of big bits of wood in the tank along with mostly rock and gravel, she'll eat the wood she needs, but otherwise leave the decor alone.

Obviously, a Panaque won't eat rocks, but I doubt that anything will prevent the fish from attempting to gnaw on "anything chewable". This is akin to thinking that if you put enough "chube" ["Chewable paper tube"] in a rabbit hutch, it's not going to chew on the actual woodwork in the hutch. Like rabbits, Panaque will attempt to gnaw on anything - probably including the rocks, but the rocks will not show marks.

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Mats

Hi Mats,

Well yes, obviously, she's going to scrape everything. But if there's more rock and less wood, I'm assuming there will be fewer wood chippings in the tank. I don't plan on removing wood altogether, and certainly not doing anything likely to compromise her health. I'm not an entirely inexperienced fishkeeper despite my 'lurker' status on this Forum!

What I'm after is a balance between her need to eat wood and my desire to have a clean tank! I do wonder if eating fibre glass or polyurethane or whatever those backdrops are made from could be dangerous/toxic. I hope not.

Cheers, Neale

I didn't think, at all, that you were inexperiences [you wouldn't ask that sort of questions then].

I'm not enitely convinced, however, that your argument holds. It's probably just going to destroy the few pieces quicker.

Polyurethane is a pretty "inert" compound - meaning, it will come out of any digestive tract the same way it came in. PU doesn't even burn, it just breaks down into some noxious stuff [urea -> ammonia] if you you heat it sufficiently.

Fibreglass, if it's broken into small enough pieces is probably worse. The polyester used together with fibreglass is again pretty indestructable in a digestive system.

I wasn't able to find the material used in the Juwel background in my brief search - so I don't know what effect that may have. I doubt it's actually fibre-glass based. I managed to find some German sites, but it still doesn't say what the material is beyond "Kunststuff"(sp?), which means "man made", with no further explanation of what the actual material is. Some other site did indicate that it's "foam", which makes me think it's PU foam - but I could be wrong. That would also make it quite soft, and thus easily chewable.

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Mats

The Juwel backdrops come in two sorts. The flat (cheaper) ones are painted expanded polystyrene. The more three-dimensional (more expensive) ones do seem to be polyurethane. I'm not 100% sure, but when I looked at them in the store, that was the impression I got.

If a Panaque wants to scrape these things apart, it will. No question. But I am curious whether Panaque "taste" what they eat, and adjust their scraping behaviour accordingly. If the thing tastes bad, would she leave it alone?

I do suspect though that in the long term she'll demolish the thing. Ugh...

I guess I'll have to stick with rocks and wood.

Cheers, Neale

The background probably won't taste of anything. Whether it's "nice to chew" is a different question. I suspect it may get torn apart.

As the material itself is pretty expensive, I'd recommend trying with a small piece before you go the whole hog and fit it in your new big tank.

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Mats