Hydrochloric acid, or muriatic acid will do the job. Try making different solutions, but I guess the
strongest the easiest for you. After you see it worked, wash thoroughly to remove the acid.

Marcus


Hiya Folks,

Normally when people post to this list, with cleaning questions, they want to know how to the gunk
off their shells. I've got the opposite problem, trying to determined the grain size in some bottom
samples (actually a whole lot of bottom samples) and the shells material is turning out to be a
problem.

How it works is this: we get a scoop of "gack" from, say, the bottom of Bridgeport Harbor. We use a
vac to suck out moisture. We let it dry under a fume hood overnight. We put it into an oven and dry
it at about 100° F overnight. Then we break it up and sieve it to see what size the grains are.

After the oven step, but before the sifting step, we've been breaking up the material in a mortar &
pestle. The shell material makes this problematic. There's so much fine stuff I can't get at with
all the small bits of shells in the mix. The litte clam valves make great hiding places for
mudballs. That's the real problem, the itty bitty mudballs that don't get broken up and then throw
off the numbers as they pretend to be bigger particles!

Maybe we could just dissolve the shells. Not worried about the silica stuff, but the carbonate.

So acid then. What kind of acid? At what concentration? And for how long? Ideally this should be a
quick process.

Any suggestions conch-Lers? Advice would be much appreciated. These frickin' mudballs are making me
crazy!

Thanks,

Ellen Bulger

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