Anyone ever work with this kind of rock/stone?

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Sublimer

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Mar 7, 2013
Messages
38
Location
Lubbock/Fort Worth, TX
My roommate bought it at Lowe's. He has absolutely no idea what kind of stone it is and apparently neither did the employees but they sold it to him. Regardless we went ahead and smashed it into cave size pieces and he let me take the reigns to clean it since I've cleaned everything we put in our tank. This type of rock in particular is taking much longer to clean though. I've scrubbed it with a steel scrubber and rinsed it over and over tirelessly for 3 days now and it still lets off a bit of brown water when I scrub and rinse.

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This is just one of the smaller pieces to show y'all what the stone looks like. At this point, you can see the surface is smooth and if you put it in clean water it doesn't muck it up even slightly. But again, if I scrub it hard enough I manage to take off some dirt residue. I'm afraid that if I put it in the tank, over time the dirt will release slowly into the water even if it doesn't appear to be. Will my filter slowly take care of those particles or should I consider leaving this rock out of the picture?
 
Looks like a sandstone ... Personally I stay away from sedimentary rocks. I go with granites, quartz stones and slate.
 
Sounds like the same exact story. I bought sand stone and I scrubbed and soaked it over and over. I even bleached it then let it soak in the sun. However when I put it in the aquarium I had little to no cloudiness/debris. Check out my profile pic for example. I've had no problems with it
 
I was taught never to assume, and yet I have the basic assumption that nothing bad will happen. I'm gonna let this ride for a while in the hopes that we can draw a solid conclusion or else I think I'll take Cameron's word for it and see what happens.

Btw, could you post a high res version of your stone setup for me? I'd gladly appreciate it
 
You should be fine with that. Only clean it with water though. The stones are porous and will soak in chemicals and things and can release them into your water.
 
I have just one stone like that in my 10G and have no problems..if it causes problems in your tank, then simply remove it.
 
The rest of the pieces in the cleaning bucket sitting in clean water for another look.

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If we have a confirmation for sandstone I'm putting it in tonight.
 
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Yea that's grey. All the stone pieces have that rusty brown tinge but I can definitely see the stone might actually be grey. I dunno if this is normal or bad news...
 
There is some type of test where if you put vinegar I believe on the rock and if it bobbles up than its not safe. I might be wrong and I can't remember the details but look it up.
 
If it has a rusty appearence then it could contain metals which is something you don't want to put in the tank.
 
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