Rock Testing

[JohnC]

Hiya,

I'm struggling to find something in my kitchen/house to test a rock.

Vinegar isn't making it fizz. Can anyone point me to a household strong acid that I can pour onto it to check?

Ta,
John

 

[OllieNZ]

What are the water paramaters in your tank?
Have a read of this http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/rock_metals.php and this http://ukaps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=17407 It should help.

 

[JohnC]

What are the water paramaters in your tank?
Have a read of this http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/rock_metals.php and this http://ukaps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=17407 It should help.

Yeah I read that one. The thing i'm holding is either mudstone or a limestone some strong acid would really help me nail it.

 

[OllieNZ]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hydrochlo...Equipment_Lab_Supplies_ET&hash=item1e69961a78

Cant think of anything around the house that would be stronger then vinegar. Car battery acid maybe?

 

[hinch]

if its limestone and I remember basic chemistry correctly you can put it in coke over night and when you ph test the coke in the morning it could be an alk or ph neutral as limestone neutralises acid

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Try a "domestic limescale cleaner", something like "Viakal", "STC", "HG Hagesan" etc. You could also scrape the rock surface as well, a metal file or some emery cloth will do. I usually use an old knife sharpening "steel".

Once you have a small scraped area, and have some rock powder, drip the scale remover on the powder/cleaned area. If you can't tell whether you are getting any bubbles (CO2 evolved) the rock is either non-carbonate, or so hard it isn't going to dissolve in the tank any-way.

cheers Darrel

 

[JohnC]

Thanks for the suggestions guys,

All good. In the end I went to my LFS and borrowed their nitrite (or nitrate, i cant remember which) test kits that has one of the regents as hydrochloric acid and used that. It did the trick.

The bad news was the rock contained carbonates.