IceCap Cloud Stone, 44 lbs
SKU: IC-RCS
MSRP: $ 99,32
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Available Through Authorized Retailer
- All-Natural Neutral Gray Palette: Showcases a versatile matte-gray coloration that introduces a clean, mature mountain-cliff aesthetic without overwhelming your livestock.
- Bulk 44lb Hardscape Assortment: Packaged in a heavy-duty 44-pound box featuring a random, curated variety of shapes, dimensions, and weights to assemble complex layouts.
- Livestock and Invertebrate Safe: Non-abrasive natural weathered faces ensure bottom-dwellers, grazing shrimp, and long-finned fish can explore crevices risk-free.
- Dynamic Visual Texture: Covered in subtle surface clefts and organic contours that replicate weathered stone ridges under bright, modern aquarium LED fixtures.
- Multi-Environment Adaptability: Easily integrates into minimal Japanese Iwagumi arrangements, dense riverbed displays, or multi-tiered cichlid cave systems.
- Low-Maintenance Surface Upkeep: Highly dense mineral structure resists deeply embedded organic staining, making it exceptionally easy to brush clean during routine maintenance.
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IceCap Cloud Aquascaping Stone 44lb Case (IC-RCS)
The IceCap Cloud Stone 44lb Case (SKU: IC-RCS) is an authentic, all-natural hardscaping material distributed by CoralVue to provide a clean, visually calming geological foundation for custom aquarium displays. Crafting an impactful underwater landscape requires hardscape materials that feature natural textural character and versatile shapes. Standard plastic ornaments or chemically dyed resin rocks look noticeably artificial and fade or leach compounds over time under intense aquarium LED lighting arrays. The IC-RCS serves as a premium, pure alternative, bringing raw riverbed and alpine ridge aesthetics straight into your glass display. With its soft gray tones and uniquely weathered contours, Cloud Stone instantly instills a sense of age, scale, and environmental stability into any empty tank layout.
Because this material is packed as a raw bulk 44-pound case, every box contains a completely unique, randomized selection of stone sizes and weights. This broad distribution allows aquascaping hobbyists and retail builders to execute foundational design principles flawlessly: choose heavy main stones to establish a strong focal pinnacle, medium pieces to construct flowing transitional slopes, and smaller rubble fragments to accent the foreground sand boundary. The stone's natural structure makes it easy to stack and lock configurations together safely without requiring massive amounts of expanding foam or liquid glue. Whether you are aiming to grow a vibrant, high-energy green carpeting field or a hard-water rift lake ecosystem for colorful cichlids, IceCap Cloud Stone provides a rugged, timeless, and professional-grade hardscape.
Key Features
Accentuates Live Colorations: The smooth, neutral gray background creates a natural contrast that makes the bright greens of live plants and the bright colors of nano schooling fish pop.
Safe For Low-Flow Zones: Cleansed contours maximize open water movement between stacked pieces, minimizing localized debris trapping and dead water zones.
High Structural Density: Substantial mineral core weight ensures large horizontal or vertical layouts remain completely anchored to the glass floor, resisting digging cichlids or high-turnover wavemakers.
(Note: This catalog item covers a 44-pound case of unwashed, raw natural stones. Because these are real geological formations, natural variations in shape, texture, size, and weight distribution are expected).
What’s Included:
(1) 44lb Bulk Box of Mixed Size IceCap Cloud Hardscape Stones
Technical Specs:
Official Manufacturing Title: IceCap Cloud Stone, 44lbs
SKU / Factory Part Identifier: IC-RCS
Total Packaging Weight: 44 lbs (20 kg) bulk shipping case
Average Piece Size Metric: Assorted mixture spanning roughly 4" to 9" per stone
Average Piece Count Per Box: Varies by natural weight distribution (typically 12 to 16 pieces)
Primary Material Composition: 100% All-Natural Weathered Metamorphic Rock
Aquarium Layout Suitability: Optimized for Planted Tanks, Community, Shrimp, and Cichlid Setups
Official Manufacturer Warranty Support: 1-Year Limited Factory Defect Coverage
- Open your IC-RCS shipping box outside or in a garage space, as unrefined natural stones generate fine rock dust and small transit chips during freight handling.
- Transfer the stones into a large utility bucket and rinse each piece thoroughly with a high-pressure garden hose or tap faucet to remove loose clay and soil sediment. Do not use soaps, bleaches, or chemical cleaners.
- Arrange your dry stones on a soft towel or a cardboard template cut to your tank's footprint to safely map out your design before transferring the heavy stones into a fragile glass aquarium.
- Position your bottom-most foundation rocks carefully onto the glass floor inside the tank. Pro Tip: Lay down a plastic light-diffuser grid (egg crate) beneath heavy rocks to distribute weight and protect the bottom glass pane.
- Stack your secondary stones into position, making sure each piece feels completely stable and balanced. Lock crucial contact joints together with aquarium-safe gel or epoxy putty if building steep vertical cliffs.
- Slowly add your aquarium substrate around the rock bases, place a plastic bag over the stone core to diffuse the incoming water stream, and fill the tank gently to prevent washing out your hardscape structure.
Pro Tips:
- Utilize an Egg Crate Grid Underneath Heavy Stone Footprints. Before building massive, multi-tiered rock formations with a 44lb box of Cloud Stone, head to your local hardware store and pick up a plastic fluorescent light diffuser grid (often called egg crate). Cut a piece to match the footprint of your rock structures and lay it directly on the bare bottom glass before adding your sand or gravel. This grid acts as a structural shock absorber, distributing the heavy pinpoint weight of the rocks evenly across the glass and preventing sharp points from causing stress cracks if a stone slips during installation.
- Perform a Quick Vinegar Fizz Test to Verify Parameter Stability. Like many beautiful gray natural stones, Cloud Stone can contain minor tracking veins of calcium carbonate. While completely safe for fish and shrimp, these veins can slowly raise your total hardness (GH), carbonate hardness (KH), and pH over time. If you are keeping sensitive soft-water shrimp or demanding high-tech plants, pour a few drops of household vinegar or API Nitrate Test Bottle #1 onto a dry stone. If it fizzes slightly, it will slowly buffer your water basic—which is fantastic for cichlids, but means you'll want to stay on top of regular weekly water changes to keep your parameters stable in a soft-water planted tank.
- Incorporate Moss into the Clefts to Soften Stone Edges. To give your Cloud Stone structure an authentic, ancient mountain appearance, grab small portions of a low-profile aquatic moss (like Fissidens Fontanus or Mini Christmas Moss) and tuck them into the natural grooves of the stone face outside the tank. Secure them with a tiny dab of cyanoacrylate-based superglue gel. When submerged, the moss will quickly anchor its rhizoids to the rock's texture and spread across the gray face, creating a stunning, lifelike landscape.