CrayolaViolence
New member
Got a call back from one of the manufacturers that I left my number with. Very nice guy. He knew exactly what I was going to ask when I mentioned egg crates (apparently I'm not the first to inquire about it). He said up until 2 years ago they had no idea it was being used in salt water aquariums. But they have sold it from everyone to the people the TV reality show Tanked to small time hobbyist. He said they had absolutely no data on the long term affects of the plastic in saltwater but was seriously considering bringing it up to the plastics department that molds the beta containers for various pet suppliers. He said the only time he'd heard of negative results is when people bought the white and painted it black. How most seem unaware you can buy it in sheets of black. He was very honest in his inability to answer my questions because the data just wasn't there but he was also interested in finding out the answers because of the growing interest in the product for aquarium use. Because they do make polystyrene that is water applicable but the grids are not it. So maybe, just maybe, in a few years we'll have some hard data. Until then, I'll stick with the pond liner, mostly because I don't want a thick sand bed nor do I want obstructions in the sand bed for burrowing creatures. Side note: One obscure article I found done by a Japanese research team in testing polystyrene, although it was not clear if they were testing the styrofoam version or the hard plastic version (I'm assuming the styrofoam version) is that when the microscopic beads were ingested by copepods (I think it was copepods) that it had no ill affects, but the next generation of copepods produced from those who ingested it did not thrive and seemed to suffer from defects.
