Gemstones Safe?

[normijon]

My family and I recently visited a Garnet mine and brought home some beautiful rocks with Garnet embedded in it. They would make a stunning show piece in the family aquarium, but I want to be sure its not toxic. Has anyone had any experience with this? Thanks for your help. -Norm

 

[tmack]

Good question & one I've been wondering about myself. I've got a lot of rough gemstones myself - a lot of Garnet and amethyst and smaller quantites of other types. I think the gemstone crystals themselves might be OK (not sure), but I'm not sure about gemstones that are still attached to the substrate rock (most likely granite in North Carolina). I'm not sure about garnet, but amethyst is really a type of quartz & I'd think that quartz would be pretty inert to being dissolved or releasing anything in tank water. Just all guesses on my part.

By the way did you go to a mine in the NC/SC area?

 

[normijon]

No, it was a mine in the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York. Thanks for your input!

 

[InaneCathode]

Drop vinegar on it, if it fizzes it's mostly carbonate and not safe for aquarium use. Unless you have some crazy geological formations there should be anything neccesarily 'toxic' in the rocks themselves.

 

[tmack]

Good idea on the vinegar Inane Cathode as it will indeed dissolve limestone & carbonates. I've been meaning to try it on some big garnet crystals I have anyway - to see if I can dissolve the little bit of whatever type of stuff is adhering to them. A stronger acid would be best but vinegar I have!

Ok on the Adirondaks normijon. We've got the Blue Ridge & Smoky mountains down here, and a ton of gemstone mines not that far from Charlotte. I'm planning on making some trips this spring. We recently bought a 5 gallon bucket of gem mine material and we're hooked on it now. Besides garnets, amethyst & quartz, we've found some aquamarine, peridot, what I think may be some small emeralds, and a lot of gem type crystals & minerals that I haven't yet been able to identify. Those big pieces of clear amethyst sure would add a bit of color to the tanks.

 

[Naughtygirlrlw]

I would love to see some pictures when you get it all set up!

 

[Bignose]

Vinegar is a weak acid, and can be very diffucult to use for the alkalinity of the rocks test. A stronger acid that every good fishkeeper has access to is nitric acid, in the second bottle of the nitrate test kit. Using that acid will yield much more definitive test results than a weaker acid like vinegar.

 

[tmack]

Vinegar is a weak acid, and can be very diffucult to use for the alkalinity of the rocks test. A stronger acid that every good fishkeeper has access to is nitric acid, in the second bottle of the nitrate test kit. Using that acid will yield much more definitive test results than a weaker acid like vinegar.

Hi & thanks. Actually I was just wanting to remove the residual impurites on the face of the crystal, not test the alkalinity. Unless they're wet the garnets I have (some about the size of a small grape) look more like black rocks than deep red crystals. I have access to several types of concentrated acid here at work, and I may try the nitric on one of the smaller garnets. It would definitely be quicker than waiting forever for the weak acetic acid in vinegar to dissolve anything!

BTW, the wife has already told me that we're not putting any of our gemstones in the tanks! We'll see about that! One or two might magically appear in a tank