Are Plastic Pots in Aquarium toxic to fish?

November 7, 2006 9:44 AM

Instead of planting my plants directly in the gravel of my aquarium, I was thinking of putting them in pots. Clay pots are fine, I think, but I was curious about plastic pots. Anyone out there know if those are safe to use? No toxins leaking into the water? I wouldn't even know what to test for. Home Depot sells a lot of these cheap.
posted by rsol44 to Pets & Animals (3 answers total)

Plastic should be fine. You couldn't Google this? Here's one example.
posted by agregoli at 9:50 AM on November 7, 2006

The plastic pots will not release anything into the water, but make sure to clean them before using them so that anything that has accumulated on the pots will not be released into the water.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 10:57 AM on November 7, 2006

Agreeing with what others have said, I've used plastic pots for a variety of things in aquariums without trouble numerous times. I can't say what the chemical make up of these are, but since many of the cheap pots may be used for food plants, its probably a safe bet they're food grade.

Rinse well though. In addition to incidental spraying of pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers, there may be chemicals left over from the casting process.

Just curious though; why would you want to limit the plants to pots? You won't have as much water flow through the roots that way. You can resolve this to a certain extent by putting lots of holes in the sides, but most successful planted tanks just plant directly into the substrate.

For a good planted aquarium site, check out plantedtank.net. I'm much more a saltwater person than freshwater, so when I have questions about my two small planted tanks, I check there.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 12:09 AM on November 8, 2006