so i purchased some black shale from petco today, and was wondering if its safe for my tank since ive been reading conflicting opinions on it. it was labeled as "north american pet medium black shale bulk" and ive found it on their site, its here http://www.northamericanpet.com/rock-garden/2/ what do you guys think? it didnt fizz from vinegar
this stuff ok?
- Thread starter m8r8j
- Start date
It should be okay if it passes the fizz test. I too bought some shale from Petco a while back and it's been in my 125 SA cichlid tank without issue. I was very careful to test water parameters every day for a week after adding it and twice on the day i added it. No change.
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The fizz test is just to check for calcium. I have a problem with the material being shale. Are you sure it's not slate? Slate would be safe. However, shale is usually associated with oil deposits. So much so that there are companies and research labs investigating the profitability of processing the crude oil content within shale deposits. If it were me, I'd opt to keep the shale as garden decor and select other rocks for use in my aquariums.
Shale can become slate (geologically), but I consider shale suspect for a tank. While slate is inert, black shale can contain things you don't want in a tank like sulfur, although mostly it would be carbon or iron. I don't know of a simple test for sulfur (other than smell?)