Lithium Quartz

I have a piece of lithium quartz that I’d like to put in my newt tank, and I was wondering if anyone had any advice on whether or not that would be a good idea. I know that it's ok to use other quartzes in aquariums,, but I haven’t been able to find any information that pertains specifically to lithium quartz. Lithium quartz has a hardness of 7, but it contains traces of lithium, which has a hardness of 0.6, so I’m concerned about the lithium leeching into the water.

I would presume that the lithium is bound chemically to the quartz and would not be able to leech out; but I could be wrong and the lithium be found in a soluble lithium salt on the surface of the quartz. I'm not sure hardness has as much to do here as solubility--depending on what the lithium was bound to would be the determining factor as to whether or not lithium would leech out. Again, I doubt there is any danger here, but if you want to play it safe, don't put it in.

Thanks for the advice, aquick06. I’m not sure if the lithium is chemically bonded to the quartz or not. From what I’ve read, lithium quartz is plain clear quartz with inclusions of lithium in it. http://www.downtoearthcrystals.com/index.php/cPath/66 notes that “The lithium often occurs as a phantom within a clear quartz crystal, other times the lithium inclusions totally engulf the crystal.” Does this mean that there might be specks of pure lithium on the outside of the crystals? If that’s the case, I doubt I’d want to put them in the tank.

I’ve been doing a lot of research, but I still haven’t come to a conclusion about what I want to do. http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cach...ish&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a notes that lithium hypochlorite is considered extremely toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates, so I want to be 100% positive that the newts will be ok before putting the rocks in the water. I found a lot of interesting information about how lithium reacts with water at http://www.lenntech.com/elements-and-water/lithium-and-water.htm, but I’m having trouble making sense of it.

Hazel,

Lithium itself would occur only in an ionic form in freshwater (don't worry about the hypochlorite), but as it's naturally rare I don't think it's advisable to expose your newts to it in case they are affected by it. I'm not sure how soluble lithium ions are, but given that the related elements sodium or potassium are very soluble, you should assume it will dissolve. Elevated concentrations of lithium in the water may cause problems because the newts may try to use it instead of sodium or potassium.

I would expect quartz to be relatively inert in water. However, in the confined situation of an aquarium, and because the quartz may contain other minerals (not just lithium) you should not place any kind of crystal in your aquarium.

Tristan

Tristan, Thank you for your input. Since I’m not really sure exactly what the crystal is made of, I’m going to leave it out of the tank.