Rocks Or Not?

[Mackem74]

Just enjoyed a flying visit to the Lake District and to Windermere.
The kids ran wild and collected some nice small rocks/slate and said they wanted to put some in to our Trigon 190 when we get home.
Is this a good idea?
Do they need any work on them before adding to the tank?
Could it cause problems for the water and the fish?
Any thoughts?

 

[bubblesburst80]

you can boil them but be careful as they get really hot and dont put them in cold water to cool as they can explode.
Personally i scrub in a hot, mild bleach solution and they rinse and rinse and rinse some more just to be sure!
You can also do a vinegar test just to make sure the rock is safe for your tank - basically if you drop vinegar on it and in fizzles it isn't safe!

xXx

 

[-germ-]

I'm not sure, The-Wolf, a poster on this site used to have a fairly comprehensive topic about rocks in his signature.
I can't recall whether it touched on cleaning 'wild caught' rocks...
For some reason the link doesn't appear to be working for me, if you perform an advanced search under The-Wolf and click on the link, it should work, its possibly just my computer....

 

[LukeFishwalker]

I'm not sure, The-Wolf, a poster on this site used to have a fairly comprehensive topic about rocks in his signature.
I can't recall whether it touched on cleaning 'wild caught' rocks...
For some reason the link doesn't appear to be working for me, if you perform an advanced search under The-Wolf and click on the link, it should work, its possibly just my computer....

Here is the link that germ is talking about:

http/www.fishipedia.org/index.php?title=Rocks