Coconut Hut

[Moesmom]

I just made a coconut hut according to Bocomo's directions and I wanted to ask if you leave on the stringy threads or remove them? I read too in another group that sometimes the hut can color your water yellow for a little so I boiled my huts twice and have also soaked them a couple time today. Has anyone had any bad experiences with these huts?

[AquaGem]

Well, I'm not a coconut hut expert, as I bought them from the store and stuffed them into the tank, but no yellow colored water or anything. Hey bocomo, sweetness on your thread helping someone out!

[jptjpt]

Remove as much of the thread stuff as you can since it will eventually break down in the tank. There should just be the thin shell (inside and outside) once you're done. I did a couple of these back in the 80s before any of the stores sold them. My clown loaches used to love crowding inside them. Brings back memories....they're all gone now (sniff) :( but I still have the coconut hut somewhere in storage.

[BoCoMo]

You can remove them by scraping them off with a knife. I personally leave them on to give the java moss something to hold on to. I keep a pretty good eye on my tanks and water quality so I'm not too concerned with the strings breaking down over time.

Thanks for the shout out BTW! :D How did you like the construction process?

[E's_Crab_Shack]

In my 20 long red claw crab tank i had 3 coconut shels i used for their homes. I left the string on and not only did it not cloud the water but the crabs LOVED to eat it. But i guess if you just have fish theres no reason to leave it on there

[Moesmom]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I think I will take the long pieces off and leave a little bit of the rough areas for the java moss to adhere to like Bocomo says.

By the way Bocomo the instructions where great, thanks for posting them. I do need to go make the doors a little bigger. Right now I just have a little 4 inch terracotta pot lying on it's side in the tank and the briggs snails are in it all the time so I guess I need to make the doors big enough for them to get in to the hut too since I wasn't going to keep the terra cotta pot in there.