CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

ok i love to go out and find rock to put in my tank, and if you don't already know i live somewhere between b.f.e and the middle of nowhere. i am just wondering about this rock i found yesterday, it looks like lava, you know when you watch discovery channel and you see volcanoes right as the lava cools it is all black and smooth and kind of wavey like, that is what this rock looks like, but on the bottom it is a bunch of little waves all bunched together. any idea if it would be safe to put in a tank. i know you have to watch out for rocks with coal and other mineral properties that can hurt your fish, i will try to get a pic posted here in a little while. let me know what you all think. oh yeah i found the rock near a creek with a lot of arrow heads and flint.

I wouldn't chance it just because you never now what could leech out of it into the water.

If it's obsidian, no problem. What you might do is soak it for a few days. Then after it's dried, drop some vinegar on it. If it fizzes, don't use it. Otherwise, probably OK.

wooooooooooooow!!!!!! so glad i didn't put that rock in my tank. i asked my aunt to look at it b/c she has lived here her whole life adn it was pitch!!!!!!!!!!!! from a coal mine, where we were in the woods there used to be a coal mine and there is still lumps of coal and pitch left laying around and in the creeks and what not, this was in the creek, that would explain why it was smooth one side and rough on the other.

dan i really thought that it was obsidain rock at first but it just didn't have the same texture the more i looked and helt it, my aunt told me if we put flame to it that it would catch eventuly and it did, so that just proved what it was even further. i did collect some very nice pieces of flint, i don't blieve flint would hurt a tank will it? i have a few little pieces of slat in the oscar tank, not big at all just amazing colors. i can't wait to get back to cheeha this spring and get some more. and if you have ever seen the fisrt micheal, camp crystal lake, that is the place. went swimming there last summer, spokey at night though.