happygirl65
Aquarium Advice Addict
Hello,
I am here to ask exactly how to tell if my rocks have any toxic minerals. Besides posting pictures here...how else can I tell? Rocks are in abundance here. I know to stay away from the ones with iron in them and can tell them at a glance.
What I have a lot of are flag stone rocks that chip right off the rocks face in large sheets. They are mostly green in color and quite hard. They are not easy to break straight on but will fracture in sheets quite easily.
What I want to do is build a cave/terrace at the back of my tank and coming around the sides a bit. I would be using small and medium pieces of this flaked off flagstone to create a kind of terrace of caves in my aquarium. I would probably use a high speed grinder to smooth the edges so they are not sharp before putting them in.
I read something about pouring a household cleaner on one of the rocks to test and see if it bubbles? But I am assuming this will only tell me if it will eventually dissolve, not whether the rock itself contains minerals that will possibly affect my water quality.
Should I put some in a bucket of water, testing params before and after checking for differences? Is that a good way of telling if they will change the water quality?
My alternative is to buy styrofoam and carve the cave structure... saw someone on here doing a background using that...but my concern is of course painting it and whether that will cause problems, or how to properly seal it, as well as how to keep styrofoam from trying to float away. Seems this member was going to coat the styro with cement afterward...is cement safe? I know he would probalby seal it afterwards, but what would one use to seal it....and could this sealer then be used on any kind of rock to prevent mineral contaminations?
I dont want to be difficult here, I just think it will be a fun project and have a really cool outcome f I can pull it off, plus give my future aquatic buddies lots of hiding places which is always a good thing.
TIA
I am here to ask exactly how to tell if my rocks have any toxic minerals. Besides posting pictures here...how else can I tell? Rocks are in abundance here. I know to stay away from the ones with iron in them and can tell them at a glance.
What I have a lot of are flag stone rocks that chip right off the rocks face in large sheets. They are mostly green in color and quite hard. They are not easy to break straight on but will fracture in sheets quite easily.
What I want to do is build a cave/terrace at the back of my tank and coming around the sides a bit. I would be using small and medium pieces of this flaked off flagstone to create a kind of terrace of caves in my aquarium. I would probably use a high speed grinder to smooth the edges so they are not sharp before putting them in.
I read something about pouring a household cleaner on one of the rocks to test and see if it bubbles? But I am assuming this will only tell me if it will eventually dissolve, not whether the rock itself contains minerals that will possibly affect my water quality.
Should I put some in a bucket of water, testing params before and after checking for differences? Is that a good way of telling if they will change the water quality?
My alternative is to buy styrofoam and carve the cave structure... saw someone on here doing a background using that...but my concern is of course painting it and whether that will cause problems, or how to properly seal it, as well as how to keep styrofoam from trying to float away. Seems this member was going to coat the styro with cement afterward...is cement safe? I know he would probalby seal it afterwards, but what would one use to seal it....and could this sealer then be used on any kind of rock to prevent mineral contaminations?
I dont want to be difficult here, I just think it will be a fun project and have a really cool outcome f I can pull it off, plus give my future aquatic buddies lots of hiding places which is always a good thing.
TIA