Neo Sithlord
03-21-2004, 11:26 PM
I have a pretty big collection of them and after looking at some pictures of tanks here and else where I think it'd look cool to have afew mixed in with some other natural rocks. I just don't know if they'd disolve into the water and kill the chemistry. Any advise? I figure quartz crystals are safe so long as they aren't on a large chunk of limestone. Or should I not worry about limestone messing things up? My gut tells me I should since it's poarous and slighty alcaline. Otherwise I have some fossil brain coral and other fossil coral I picked up (off the ground) when I was in Central America along with one HUGE orange agate ,my pride and joy, it litterally looks like a quater of a basket ball. I plan on heat sanatizing what ever I can and using a comecial grade choline resturaunt sanatizer on the things I can't boil just to be safe then declorinating them to be extra anal. So any thoughts on material that wouldn't be suggested in a tank? I'm not worried about damaging any of the rocks I'm sure I've clean worse gunk off rocks then my aqaurium could possible put on them.
-Neo Sithlord
DEmigh
03-22-2004, 1:47 AM
If your rocks/crystals are chemically inactive, you should be fine. You've specifically, and correctly identified the quartz as safe (It better be, because a glass aquarium is mostly quartz...) I'm no geologist, but I would suspect that most igneous and metamorphic rocks should be okay.
I propose an experiment, which I have run in the past, to determine if your rocks are chemically active. Make up a tub of water as if you were going to use it for a water change, (i.e. dechlorinate and buffer it) put in a little powerhead (or that spare HOB) for circulation. Test your water parameters, especially pH and hardness. Add rocks and wait. Test again at 24, 48 and 72 hours. If the parameters are stable, your rocks are probably safe.
Of course a good experiment requires a control, so set up another tub with the same water etc. and test it for drifting pH and so forth.
When I ran this experiment, I discovered the cause of the mysteriously dropping pH in my (then freshwater) tank. It was some atificial sedimentary rocks that I was using for decor. The rocks came out, and my pH stabilized.
There is also the factor of the metal content in many minerals. Dissolving metal salts tend to be toxic.