Slate, quartzite, marble and mystery tiles.

[lvandert]

Ok I need some help peoples. I'm working on putting together an african cichlid tank and I picked up a bunch of broken tiles (for free) from a local factory. They should be all natural stone tiles (I can see layers). The guy didn't really know what all of them were. I've given them all a once over with a tooth brush. I'm going to boil and then soak them overnight in different buckets (for water testing purposes). I know the light green chunks in the bottom of 1 are quartzite and the light brown ones are supposed to be slate. The blacker ones are where I'm at a loss of what they are (black slate maybe?). You can see the chunks of marble in there too, these are counter quality marble and not landscaping marble.
So I've marked which ones are supposed to be what and which ones I'm questioning. I have yet to do the boil or the over night soak so I might loose some in that process.

My question is what would the other ones be, and what would be the best way (outside of boiling) to clean them?

[lvandert]

Ok I have them in roughly 15 gallons of water and I plan on putting in a cup of bleach for sterilization purposes. Tomorrow I plan on rinsing like crazy and soaking in super hot water for 10 mins. I figure if it handles all that then they'll survive the tank.

[registereduser]

I don't know about bleach, rocks are porous, they might soak up bleach water and then leach it back out?

[lvandert]

yeah, I decided against that after I thought about it... there are areas I cannot clean

[MSG]

Pretty sure super hot water isn't going to do ANYTHING. It needs to be at boiling point to sanitize, but you're using a pretty good high percentage of bleach.

1 cup = 8oz?

I would leave the bucket/tub of rocks out for a week or so. Hopefully it rains a LOT.

If you are handy get a downspout and direct the water into the 15 gallon container full of water. So next time it rains, the storm will wash the rocks for you.

The ones you think are black slate is actually grey slate.


Also the bleach will turn neutralize itself after you leave it out in the sun for a while.

[lvandert]

we never get rain here. it hasn't rained in over a week and its not supposed to rain for another week. I was planning on boiling water separate from the rocks and then adding the water to them (that way I can do it outside and avoid the possibility of exploding rocks in my house)

[MSG]

Cooking them outside is a good idea. After watching all those Man vs. Wild I want to start a little fire in the backyard & see if I can boil some water.

My friend was treating his piece of driftwood for his nano tank to a 2-3 day simmering on the grill.

I don't usually boil things for aquariums, I just soak & use a light bleach solution on them.

[lvandert]

ug the only other issue I'm going to have is I wont really be able to see what it did to my hardness. My water is already super hard... All I can monitor is my ph lol. I also noticed some oily residue on the surface of the water, I'm really hoping there is jsut something on the outside and I don't have any oil-shale/slate...

[Sowman]

I had a similar situation so I broke down a lot of the stones into smaller sizes and boiled them. For the larger rocks I just boiled a corner or the stone at a time until all sides were boiled. I also used a steal pasta strainer so that it wouldn't damage the pan. I needed smaller sized as I am building a stone background (still in progress). If you cant boil them could you maybe put them on an open grill/BBQ? I've never done that before but the heat from the grill should kill everything.

[lvandert]

see yours look right though lol. when someone says slate I think of grey sheets like those, not brown with reddish streaks and bands. i'm thinking of trying to boil on the grill in a very flat pan. A while ago the bf took a giant baking pan home (2 1/2 inches deep) and its been sitting outside for ever. Well I cleaned it up yesterday and its good as new so I got what I'm boiling in, I just don't know how. but the grill is an awesome Idea!