Easily Available and Attractive Aquarium Décor You Need To Avoid

Aquarium decorations are sometimes over-prioritized by the fish-keepers that they add unnecessary objects just for the sake of decorating their tanks. But, they fail to realize that they may make the life of the fish stressed due by doing adding decorations or specifically unnecessary decorations.

As a fish-keeper, you need to know which decors are mandatory and which are optional and add them accordingly. Apart from the gravels and aquatic plants, everything else is from the genre of aquarium décor, and you will get a lot of options to decorate your aquarium.

In order to assist you in decorating your aquarium, here we have listed some attractive accessories which you can never use as aquarium décor. Take a look and decorate wisely:

Coins or Other Metals

We all have the thought to put some coins in our freshwater aquarium to make our aquarium look like a treasury. You must remember that an aquarium is a home for the fish, and you cannot pace anything just because it makes your aquarium beautiful.

Coins contain metals, especially copper, and like other metals, coins also get oxidized (like rust). At the time of getting damaged, they release toxins that can harm any aquarium fish.

Not only that, it pollutes the water slowly. Along with changing the chemistry of water, the particles may be sometimes consumed by the fish itself, which may give birth to multiple diseases.

You can test it by taking a small quantity of prepared aquarium water in a jar and keeping any metal in it for 5-7 days. Most of the metals may react within this timeframe. You will see the metal object is getting corrosion and becoming frail day by day. With water testing, you can identify how much the metal has changed the water.

Shells, Corals, and Colorful Stones

Maybe you have recently visited a beach and collected a lot of shells of different patterns and designs. You may have a hobby of collecting corals or stones too.

Even though you have a good collection of all these, you cannot place them in your aquarium. As you are the owner of a freshwater aquarium, you have to take care of every small requirement of the fish. You cannot even use these objects as the substrates too.  

You must have the idea that all these objects contain calcium at a very high rate, and this calcium can change the chemistry of aquarium water. It is beyond mention that it is very unhealthy for all freshwater fish. Along with that, pH level and water hardness get changed because of the presence of these objects.

Plastic Toys

You should have the idea that your aquarium is not a place to provide a second life to the plastic toys of your childhood. You may have plastic fish, too, but you cannot place it in the aquarium.

Actually, the aggressive ones tend to displace the decors, and some extremely aggressive ones may swallow the small toys. Small fish may chew the toys, which will cause decay in their health.

Sometimes the toys are painted with acrylic colors to make it more attractive. But after some days, you will see that the colors are leaving the toys and color particles are polluting the water.

Plastic is dangerous as it releases toxins, so there will always be a big NO for any plastic objects. You may get a handful of ideas from YouTube to make décor from plastic bottles, but each of them will be bad for the fish.

Any toy with sharp edges can harm the tail and fin and tails of the fish. So irrespective of how many toys you have, you cannot use them as your aquarium décor.

Clay and Ceramic Made Items

These objects may allow you to decorate your aquarium in a very low budget, but the fact is low-quality clay toys may dilute in water and make the water contaminated.

Of course, you can add high-quality clay and ceramic objects. According to the experts, you can put the ceramics and clay objects in the aquarium if they are safe for human beings to eat in.

Anything Small

Well, the beads of your favorite dress will indeed complement the fish, but you have to resist yourself as you cannot add that in your aquarium.

Most of the fish tend to bite and chew the objects. It is not that they will eat the items, but if that item is unsafe, the fish may consume the toxins and chemicals in it and fall sick.

In case the object is not strongly stuck with the aquarium, the large fish may swallow the item and get fatal diseases.

Wood, Rock, and Glass

Objects made of wood, rock, and glass available in the pet stores can definitely be used in any aquarium. However, these objects available around you can be much unsafe to use as all may possibly have sharp edges that may physically harm the fish.

If you are professional enough to provide these a blunt shape towards the edges by reducing its sharpness, you can use it.

You need to understand that anything available around you is not safe enough to decorate the aquarium. When the item is painted, you have to say goodbye to the thought of using it in the aquarium.

For the wooden objects, apart from the driftwood, you cannot use anything else. It’s because cleaning the piece of wood not be enough. This same thing is applicable for the fancy rocks. You cannot use any rocks available outside without testing. For the sake of decorating, you will definitely not want to harm the fish, so skip these objects.

Along with these objects, there are multiple other objects which you cannot put in the aquarium. Actually, a fish consider everything in the aquarium as eatables, and a large fish or small species will either try to eat that or try to destroy the decorations. The result in both cases will be the same – polluted water or to be more specific, water with the massive chemical change, and deterioration in fish health. So beware of adding these products.