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marine sand in lava rock

Tom Michael

Member
Joined
16 Nov 2014
Messages
271
Unbeknownst to me, I recently purchased 3 pieces of lava rock for a planted aquarium which were used previously in a salt water set up.

The reason I now know is that when moving the rocks around small grains of white coral/marine sand fall out (and there were a few small snails shells).

I have tried shaking them as much as possible in addition to hosing down a couple of times, however invariably there will be some grains left in the porous nature of the rock.

Should I be concerned? I could ditch the rocks however they are probably the nicestt pieces in a collection which took me some time to compile.
 
Hi all,
Should I be concerned?
No, definitely keep the rocks.

What happens depends on how hard your tank water is. If you already have hard water it won't make any difference at all. You can't make already hard water harder, and more alkaline, by adding calcium carbonate, it just <"won't go into solution">.
.......If you always have an excess of H+ ion acceptors, ("base-rich" conditions like Lake Tanganyika) the calcium carbonate will never dissolve and huge Neothauma shell beds (below), can develop
shell-dweller-3-jpg.jpg

<http://seaframes.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/home-shelly-home/>.
If you have soft water (more H+ ion donors) the aragonite coral sand (CaCO3) sand will go into solution (as Ca++ and HCO3- ions), but it still can't have very much effect on water chemistry, because you have very little sand and a large volume of tank water.

cheers Darrel
 
Thanks Darrel - that's what I thought, I think I read that in a previous post from you.

Also thanks for the moss offer! I got sorted so not need in the end!
 
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