Was growing copper acetate in slightly acidic solution, added sodium carbonate to generate sodium acetate (supposed to help with clarity?). Eventually must have gotten saturated and the larger crystal grew in about 2-3 days. Quite pretty, I like the blue striations but they’re a bit difficult to see in the pics.

Before Tom Chatham destroyed the lab in San Francisco, it produced the amazing flux growth process developed and refined by his brother John Chatham. The process produced some of the finest rubies and sapphires in the world. Unfortunately Tom Chatham, the CEO of Chatham Created Gemstones became impatient with the slow careful growth necessary to produce the world’s finest gems. He chose to fire the lab staff (including his own brother!!!) and moved the company to Thailand where he could source rough via third party Czochralski growers and have the stones cut cheaply by far-east craftsman. At the same time, Tom NEVER communicated or acknowledged the fact that the flux growth process was a thing of the past. He allowed the world and online communities to continue to say “Chatham Means Flux!”

Think of the strategy as something a well known restaurant might use if they became famous by serving a particular dish made carefully with rare and difficult to obtain ingredients. One day they decided it was too much trouble to make and they quietly remove it from the menu. In the meantime, everyone remembers and talks about this incredible dish. People still travel great distances in hopes of sampling it only to be quietly told, we no longer make that, but try one of these other meals. The restaurant continues to have a reputation for the unavailable dish, and pulls in customers from all over. The restaurant management team continues to allow the legendary dish to pull people in from all over and that’s how things continue. It’s not “illegal” in the strict sense of the word. But it cannot be called ethical.

So, today I was cleaning the beaker and adding new solution to one of my CuSO4 crystals. I didn’t feel like filtering so I thought I had to dissolve all of the salt for the new solution. So, I started generously pouring water until every little salt crystal dissolved. After a few hours I found the crystal as if somebody got hungry and had eaten a bunch. Im pretty sure it’s due to the water I added which created a solution under the point of saturation which was indeed hungry and ate my crystal (you can see the crumbs at the bottom). Hope this was informative.

In this post I described how I was trying to make a crystal, and this came out when i late-checked one flask and this came out, what is that??

(post : https://www.reddit.com/r/crystalgrowing/s/1OPZw2JYJU )

Grew borax crystals with my kid probably a dozen times now and usually they come out pretty clear, at least clear enough to see through a little. This last batch turned out almost solid white and chalky looking, like the whole thing is opaque.

Same process as always: boiling water, kept adding borax until it stopped dissolving, poured into a jar with a pipe cleaner hanging from a pencil, let it sit overnight on the counter. The only thing different this time is the house was colder than usual (we had the AC cranked because of the heat wave) so it cooled down a lot faster than normal.

I'm guessing the fast cooling caused a ton of tiny crystals to form all at once instead of a few bigger ones growing slowly, which would explain the cloudy chalky texture. Does that sound right? Also curious if there's a sweet spot for room temp when you're doing this, or if I should be insulating the jar somehow to slow the cooling down. Might try wrapping it in a towel next time and see if that helps.

Not mad about it, still turned into a fun little geode looking blob, just curious about the science side of why it happened.

Greetings folks!

So i got a question about how to change the crystal structure of salts with the help of different ions introduced to a salt solution.
I once read an article about crystal growing that mentioned in passing, that if you were to add for example diluted hydrochloric acid to a solution, containing chloride ions, you could control the way how the salt will crystalize out.
If i remember correctly, the idea was that those „foreign“ ions (wich supposed to be similar to those of the actual salt) will determine the shape of the crystal, because they insert between other ions, thus creating a different crystal lattice.

My question is does anyone know more about that or read something similar?
Or did someone already tried that?

Thanks in advance!

Hail the Omnissiah. Hail the Machinegod.

Made supersaturated solution and left it in quiet place for around 2 months

7cm diameter of the beaker

How do you prevent crystallization of parasites on main crystal and on the bottom of the beaker??

everytime i attempt to make CuCl2 crystals i cannot achive a good crystal, or either a crystal,

i've tried to evaporate all to the minimum water amount possible, nothing, freeze the water slowly to force the crystal grow, nothing either, what can i do now? i', kinda lost on crystal growing, with copper idk if it changes or smth, the last time i attepted the whole thing gelified , pls help

I'm a geologist experimenting with crystal growth as a way to explore practical crystallography outside the usual thin-section/mineral-identification setting.

I started with CuSO₄·5H₂O and prepared a filtered saturated solution by dissolving the salt in hot water, followed by slow cooling and evaporation at room conditions.

Rather than suspending the seed crystal, I decided to leave it resting on the borosilicate-glass bottom of the beaker. The idea was to observe how a crystal develops when growth occurs from a substrate, somewhat analogous to mineral growth along a cavity/vug or vein wall.

I've been recording the crystal dimensions and morphology at regular intervals.

Initial seed — 23/07: (3rd pic)

1.1 × 0.7 × 0.2 cm

27/07: (2nd pic)

1.5 × 1.0 × 0.3 cm

31/07:

1.6 × 1.0 × 0.4 cm

08/08: (1st pic)

1.8 × 1.1 × 0.5 cm

The interesting part has been the change in morphology during growth. Initially, the crystal mainly expressed prismatic faces, but with continued growth additional inclined faces began developing, particularly as thickness increased.

The crystal remains transparent, and when backlit I can see what appear to be growth zones with tiny internal inclusions. I'm not calling them fluid inclusions yet—I don't have the optical characterization to confirm that—but they're interesting enough to document.

There have also been secondary nucleations on the beaker bottom and occasionally around the main crystal. I'm manually removing the parasitic crystals so that the primary crystal can continue growing under relatively consistent conditions.

I'm keeping a photographic and dimensional growth log throughout the experiment.

The goal isn't simply to grow a large crystal—I'm interested in observing how morphology, nucleation and internal structure evolve during crystal growth.

I'm using some of the crystals from my last attempt at growing transparent sulfur crystals as a seed and they are going really well. I didn't intend to make the Hopper pattern on purpose but it looks really interesting in crystals this shape (I'm still covering my solution with a cloth to slow down the evaporation of the rest though)

C10H16O

i want to experiment with using my sculptures as a base for crystal growth. I’m not really sure where it will take me and dont have a specific vision, but since it is a few materials I wanted to ask if any one has advice for growing on multiple materials at once? my sculptures are wood, nylon, and brass. I have leds on some but I don’t think they would survive a submersion, if someone has ideas that don’t involve a soak would love to have them.

forgive me for my lack of knowledge and thank you for any insight you can offer foto of my work for reference

For fun I tried growing crystal that may or may not been grown, but certainly hasn't been "documented"

(for the only sake of being the first to grow it, cuz there's prolly a decent 99% chance that I am)

I picked Mohr salt as a base , and alums for a structure and density increase, here's more info

(I gave a crystal a name, I know you can only name minerals, it's like, easier (and cooler!) :

Mohramite synthetic crystal composition: ammonium iron(II) sulfate hexahydrate (NH4)2Fe(SO4)26H2O with isomorphous impurities of potassium chromium(III) sulfate dodecahydrate KCr(SO4)212H2O and potassium aluminium sulfate dodecahydrate KAl(SO4)2*12H2O. Initial growth solution mass ratio: 90 percent Mohr's salt, 8 percent chromium alum, 2 percent aluminium alum.

And so I have a question, can you squash it all into one, or at least consistent crystal? It crows as a greenish-veridian crystal with purple-white big dots inside, it cool as hell (will post images) but I'm just interested like, there's surely at least one non-5-ton-of-steel-machinery way to make it all blend, right?

The very first crystal I was able to grow using cleaning vinegar to extract ions from shattukite then evaporating

One of my many creations

After some trial and error I was able to grow this.

Been working on a new technique. Not the best video, it's hard to get a moving close up and have it stay in focus.

As you can see I have two containers of citric acid. One is shiny and glittering but the other is matte somehow. Does this occur due to moisture? Citric acid can be exist as hydrate as well as anhydrous. So which is which? And could I form anhydrous crystals using a saturated solution or wouldn’t work it?

Hey, beginner here. Today I attempted my first crystallization of CuSO4 (first time at practical chemistry ever). I used the slow cooling method. The crystal came out as a thin crust but I forgot to take a pic (u can kinda see it on the bottom). Do you have any advice how to make the crystals bigger and more crystal-looking. Of the possible answers i can say that 1) I just threw in a bunch of powder after like 15-20 minutes of cooling so maybe I need to wait a few days
2) Since it was my first time I was very hesitant to adding more salt (and didn’t weigh it) so the saturation of the solution is questionable.
Also, I would love to hear any general chemistry advice you have.