I always thought it would look neat if I had a treasure chest in the bottom of my fresh water aquarium filled with old silver and copper coins, overflowing onto the surrounding gravel. What would fresh water do to these coins? What would the coins do to the fish?
As to what the water would do to the coins, I do not think good things. Its not pure water by any means, so I would be afraid they would tarnish. I would ask an aquarium guy about the copper coins and fish. I would be afraid that possibly could be dangerous. Silver is not a dangerous metal, but copper can be in higher dosages. So, absent better info, I would say put junk silver down there.
I think it might work OK if you took basically junk silver like WL halves, Merc dimes, slick Barbers and SLQ's and coated them with several coats of clear nail polish. I think that would seal them off and keep them from tarnishing. I wouldn't do that to decent copper like IHC's but the silver is junk in reality. I have no idea if this is safe for the fish.
copper + fish = bad. Aquarium water tends to be acidic too. I'd only put valueless silver in the tank, 90% fine.
I've been keeping for fish several years now and - no. It's both bad for the fish and the coin. Yes the water is "fresh water", but there'd be chemicals, fish wate, ammonia - I am not sure how these would affect a coin in the long run. Metals, like copper, are very poisonous to any fish (esp. scale-less) and can kill the fish very quickly if it corrodes. that's why public fountains don't have fish in them.
How about gold plated quarters? The gold should be inert and it should seal the quarter away from the water. Add some silver coins (fractional weight silver rounds?) and you have your treasure chest. (Also allows the gold plated state quarters to be good for something.)
In a fresh water tank a few copper coins isn't likely to harm the fish only if you used a large amount would I worry about fish health. In fact some people used to put a few copper cents in to ward off ick and other diseases and kill pest snails in tanks. My father did this back when I was a child and he had about 25 tanks breeding fancy guppies. Aquari-sol an aquarium medication is based off copper for fresh water fish tanks also used to treat ick and other diseases. If a salt water tank forget about copper you'd be risking a disaster. Also another caveat as mentioned earlier copper coins in a tank will kill any snails and dwarf shrimp that you may keep as pets, the copper can also leech into the silicone used to hold the tank together and make the tank unsafe in the future for invertebrates.
It also depends on what kind of fish you are keeping. Scaleless freshwater fish are less tolerant to copper than fish with scales since it is absorbed directly into their body through their skin. The additives you use when you do water changes specifically remove/neutralize(?) the copper for that very reason. It's bad for fish. While I don't think a few coins would be that harmful(dependent on the size of your tank), I certainly wouldn't put a treasure chest full in my aquarium and I have a 125 gallon in the living room. PS - I love it that my two hobbies, fish keeping and coin collecting, have combined into one.
I don't like the sound of it. Why would you introduce an element into your biosphere that you had really no control over? The aquarium hobby is stocked with products made of inert materials, specifically so that you CAN control dosages of things like copper, should you need them. Stability is the key word when it comes to maintaining a specialized ecosystem. How do you know some odd metal ions won't disrupt the function of the anaerobic bacteria that constitute the organic filtration? If you tamper with that cycle, you may get high concentrations of ammonia and a tank full of dead fish. Too many unknowns. Keep the fish in the tank and the coins in an album.
Definitely NO Lincolns dated after 82 since the zinc cores might affrect the fish. I like Conder's advice, gold and silver only provided you don't mid a little fish doo doo and algae on your "display". As for goldfish, I learned a long time ago that given the roight environment, your typical goldfish can grow up to 2 feet in length! I had a 200 gallon pond in my backyard which was big enough to let my "feeder" goldfish grom better than 8 inches in length. Then the damned racoons discovered them! Arg!
Copper is no good for inverts, it will kill them. Inverts are any creatures with out a back bone like snails, corals, anemones. 90% silver coins have 10% copper......... so if your going to use silver use Eagles. I have 2 aquariums, a 110 and a 125 both are fish only salt water, Clowns, Tangs and Damsels.
Fish, mammals and fowl are all capable of getting heavy metal poisoning from too much copper, zinc and aluminum salts and others. Sterling and pure silver won't harm anything/anyone and is in fact very sanitary same as gold. Just don't use collectible numismatic items.
Here in Hawaii at the Ala Moana Center, (which is a fairly large mall) they have these huge Koi fish in the fountains, and they allow people to throw coins in them. I was always wondering what it could do to the fish
dbice - I love those koi. Was not a huge fan of Ala Moana Center(too many tourists) but those koi are amazing. I don't think the coins are in the water long enough for them to start leaching metals. They clean them out pretty regularly.
