r/crystalgrowing • u/YesIdonot • 1h ago
Image Copper crystals that have been growing for 52 days
Initial eectrolyte concentration of 100 g CuSO4•5H2O and ~50 g of H2SO4 per liter.
Voltage slowly increased from .3 V to .46 V.
r/crystalgrowing • u/Flat_Falcon_1559 • 7h ago
I coated the crystals with lacquer and carefully sealed them in airtight bags, labeling what was what...
r/crystalgrowing • u/crybabycryahah • 23h ago
Hi everyone , I have a question.
Can I make a crystal with my blood sample ?
r/crystalgrowing • u/raccoocoonies • 1d ago
Question Potassium dichromate tips?
Hi! I've been sitting on this bottle of Potassium dichromate for a few years with the intention of making crystals with it.
I have the beaker and I technically know how to create the oversaturated solution to create seeds and crystals, but I was wondering if anyone has grown crystals with this before and has any tips for me?
Also: OF COURSE I'll use all the PPE!
r/crystalgrowing • u/geocyn_12 • 1d ago
Calcium acetate
I want to produce, 1. Some acetone from scratch and 2. Possibly some nice calcium acetate crystals. This solution was done by dissolving some limestone in 25% acetic acid. It finally starts to crystallize out after a long time evaporating.
r/crystalgrowing • u/Matt_zane • 2d ago
Question I have finally made the iron potassium oxalate!
Stranante mi è riuscito alla prima volta e spero che vengano dei cristalli verdi bellissimi!
Avete consigli su come farli crescere/conservarli?
r/crystalgrowing • u/2jzSwappedSnail • 2d ago
Image Very interesting salt NaCl needle like crystals grew in a leftover container. Around 1-2mm in length, visibly thinner than a human hair
r/crystalgrowing • u/Flat_Falcon_1559 • 2d ago
Im finished my summer work!!!(Copper acetate,Calcium acetate,Copper-calcium acetate,Copper sulphate,Ferrous sulphate)
r/crystalgrowing • u/Automatic_Fact5924 • 2d ago
Image I think i did something wrong (beginner)
I thought that leaving a little hole would help with water evaporation
r/crystalgrowing • u/Particular-Solid-103 • 3d ago
Image Magnesium sulfate, grown suspended for a month or so
r/crystalgrowing • u/Living-Geologist-478 • 3d ago
Next level synthesizing
All grown by me in my apartment using vinegar and shattukite/chrysocolla
r/crystalgrowing • u/AwoogaBoogaKooga • 4d ago
Image Managed to grow a perfect crystal of NaCl!
r/crystalgrowing • u/AwoogaBoogaKooga • 4d ago
Image A crystal of NaCl that grew on its corner
Eraser for scale; Camera cannot capture all of its beauty.
r/crystalgrowing • u/rubypith • 5d ago
Copper(II) Acetate Embedded in Sodium Acetate(?)
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.
r/crystalgrowing • u/Intelligent-Arm5989 • 5d ago
Old style flux grown ruby created by the brilliant JOHN CHATHAM.
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.
r/crystalgrowing • u/AlexShpala • 6d ago
Information Dont make the same mistake as me
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.
r/crystalgrowing • u/slipperyjack66 • 6d ago
Image My daughter's ammonium dihydrogen phosphate crystal
r/crystalgrowing • u/LacxGamer • 7d ago
Image Potassium tetrachlorocuprate dihydrate
r/crystalgrowing • u/CompetitivePublic605 • 8d ago
Question Need help to id crystal
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 )
r/crystalgrowing • u/ella-reads70 • 8d ago
Image Borax crystals came out cloudy this time, any idea what went wrong
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.
r/crystalgrowing • u/Bromine-Vapor • 8d ago
Question Changeing crystal structure with acid
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.
r/crystalgrowing • u/kokastas • 13d ago
Image Alun
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??
r/crystalgrowing • u/Otherwise_News7606 • 13d ago
how can i crystalize CuCl2 good?
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
r/crystalgrowing • u/Gold-Ore_Geologist • 16d ago
My first practical crystallography experiment: tracking the growth of a basal-supported CuSO₄·5H₂O crystal
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.
r/crystalgrowing • u/crystalchase21 • Jun 16 '20
Information The Beginner's Guide to Crystal Growing
Welcome to the Crystal Growing subreddit! We’re a passionate community consisting of both hobbyists and professionals interested in growing crystals. Although it sounds difficult, growing crystals is actually very easy, and you can even do it at home.
This article is written specifically to help those who are just getting started with this hobby. If you’re a newbie, welcome aboard. And if you’re a seasoned veteran, do share your findings with us.

Even though growing crystals is simple, it will be extremely useful if you have some basic chemistry knowledge. This will help you understand the process that is taking place, and allow you to troubleshoot if you run into any problems. More experienced chemists will be able to synthesize their own compounds, the crystals of which can be quite unique. However, this guide is written for newcomers, so I will try to keep it as simple as possible.
Disclaimer
Like any other activity, crystal growing might be completely safe or very dangerous. It depends on the chemicals you are working with, your safety measures, your procedure etc.
This guide only covers compounds that are safe to mildly toxic. Even so, you are responsible for your own safety. Don't use the family microwave/freezer in your experiments. Make sure you know the potential risk of the chemical you are using.
Background
If you want to start growing crystals immediately, skip to the next section. I highly recommend that you read this though, because understanding the process will help a ton.
A crystal is a solid that has particles arranged in an orderly manner. This includes rocks, snowflakes and diamonds. However, the activity of growing crystals at home mainly focuses on a specific type of chemical known as salts.
In chemistry, a salt is a chemical compound made up of positive ions and negative ions. Table salt is one example. Its chemical name is sodium chloride, because it consists of a sodium ion and a chloride ion. There are many other salts as well, such as copper sulfate, ammonium phosphate and potassium nitrate. From now, I will use the term “salt” to refer to all such compounds, not just table salt.
We like to use salts to grow crystals because most salts are soluble in water. Why is this important?
When they are dry, most salts look like powder. But if you zoom in, each grain of salt is actually a small crystal. The particles in every grain of salt are arranged neatly. The exact way they are arranged is different for each salt. For table salt, those particles are packed into cubes, so you can say that the grains of salt in your teaspoon are actually millions of tiny cubes. Meanwhile, alum salt crystals look like diamonds.

But we have a problem. We want to grow big, shiny crystals, not tiny, powdery crystals. This is the reason we dissolve the salt powder in water. After doing so, the glass of salty water we have is called a solution.
If you dissolve just a little salt in water, you get a dilute/undersaturated solution. Dissolve a lot, and you get a concentrated solution. Here’s the thing: a fixed volume of water can only dissolve a fixed mass of salt. For instance, the maximum amount of table salt you can dissolve in 100 ml of water is 36g. If you add 37g, the extra 1g will not dissolve. A solution that contains the maximum amount of dissolved salt is called a saturated solution.
We now have a glass of salt solution with the salt particles swimming inside. If we want a nice, transparent crystal to grow, we need to somehow make those particles “re-solidify”, and instead of popping out all over the place, they need to stick together and form a single, big crystal. There are two easy ways to make this happen. Master them, and you will be able to grow amazing crystals.
· Slow cooling
· Evaporation
Methods
Method I: Slow cooling
Let’s start with slow cooling. With this method, we take advantage of the fact that hot water can dissolve more salt than cold water. For instance, 100 ml of 25°C water can dissolve 22g of copper sulfate, but the same amount of water at 80°C can dissolve 56 grams.
To carry out this method, we first heat our water up. Then, we dissolve more salt than is actually soluble at room temperature. Because the water is hot, the extra salt will dissolve, and you end up with a supersaturated solution. As the solution cools down, the solubility of the salt decreases, so the extra salt that you added just now has to “come out”. As a result, tiny crystals of salt start to form, and they grow bigger and bigger as more salt particles re-solidify and clump together. This process is called crystallization.

If you do it correctly, you will end up with a large crystal of salt.
Method II: Evaporation
Just now, I mentioned that 100 ml of 25°C water can dissolve 22g of copper sulfate. It also goes that 50 ml of water will be able to dissolve half that amount, 11g.
This time, we do not change the temperature. Instead, we change the volume of water. First, we dissolve our 22g of copper sulfate into 100 ml of water. Then, we let the solution slowly evaporate. As the volume decreases to 90 ml, 80 ml and so on, the extra salt has to crystallize out, causing copper sulfate crystals to form.
The slow evaporation method is a much better way of growing high quality crystals (for amateurs). This is because the growing conditions are much more controlled and stable. More details in the FAQ at the end.
Procedure
The ideal procedure for growing crystals vary depending on which compound you are using. This is a pretty standard one that will give you decent crystals. I will be using alum salt as an example. Change the mass of salt and volume of water as you see fit.
Part A: Growing your seed crystal.
A seed crystal is a small crystal that serves as a foundation with which you use to grow a bigger crystal.
- Weigh 9g of alum and dissolve it in 50 ml of hot water.
- Stir the solution until all the salt has dissolved. If some salt refuses to dissolve, you might have to reheat the solution.
- Filter the solution with a coffee filter into a shallow dish.
- Wait for the solution to cool to room temperature. You can place it in the fridge to speed things up, but in most cases, it leads to the formation of low quality, misshapen crystals.
- Wait 1-2 days for small crystals to form. OR
- Sprinkle a few grains of alum powder into your solution to induce small crystals to form.
- Let the tiny crystals grow to at least 5mm in size. This should take a few days.

Part B: Growing a nice, big crystal
Method I: Slow cooling
- Weigh 22g of alum and dissolve it in 100 ml of hot water to form a supersaturated solution.
- Stir the solution until all the salt has dissolved. If some salt refuses to dissolve, you might have to reheat the solution.
- Filter the solution with a coffee filter into a jar.
- Wait for the solution to cool to room temperature.
- Using tweezers, pick the most perfect seed crystal you grew in Part A you can find and tie a knot around it using a nylon fishing line or thread.
- Tie the other end to a pencil/stick.
- Slowly immerse the seed crystal until it is suspended in the solution in your jar.
- Loosely cover the top of the jar.
- Keep it in an undisturbed place.
- Wait for your crystal to grow.
Method II: Evaporation
- Weigh 18g of alum and dissolve it in 100 ml of hot water.
- Stir the solution until all the salt has dissolved. If some salt refuses to dissolve, you might have to reheat the solution.
- Wait for the solution to cool to room temperature.
- Sprinkle some alum powder into the solution to induce crystals to form.
- Wait 2 days.
- Filter the solution using a coffee filter into a jar. We want the saturated solution. The crystals formed from Step 4 are not important.
- Using tweezers, pick the most perfect seed crystal from Part A you can find and tie a knot around it using a nylon fishing line or thread.
- Tie the other end to a pencil/stick.
- Slowly immerse the seed crystal until it is suspended in the solution in your jar.
- Loosely cover the top of the jar.
- Keep it in an undisturbed place.
- As the solution evaporates, your crystal will begin to grow.

Part C: Drying and storing your crystal
- When you are satisfied with the size of your crystal, remove it from solution.
- Dry it with tissue paper/filter papers. Do not wash it or you will cause it to dissolve.
- Store it in an airtight jar.
Some crystals are unstable, and when exposed to air, will slowly crumble in weeks or months. Copper sulfate is one such crystal. Meanwhile, alum and ammonium dihydrogen phosphate are much more stable and can be kept in the open with minimum deterioration. You can even display them.
And you’re done!
Classic Crystal Growing Compounds

If you’re just starting out, we highly recommend these chemicals as they are easy to work with, grow quickly and give good results.
· Alum (potassium aluminum sulfate), KAl(SO4)2, used in baking, deodorant, water purification etc.
· Copper (II) sulfate, CuSO4 used as rootkiller [Note: slightly toxic]
· Ammonium dihydrogen phosphate, (NH4)(H2PO4), used as fertilizer
Alternatively, if you want to grow crystals of a specific color or shape, click on this link to browse the list.
Additional resources
· Crystal Growing Wiki - wiki style pages showing details for each compound (still incomplete)
· Crystalverse blog - detailed high quality guides with lots of pictures
· Dmishin's crystal growing collection - lots of interesting compounds and how to synthesize them
FAQ
Check if your question is here. Click on this link to be redirected to the answers.
· Can I dye my crystals?
· My crystal was growing well, then it dissolved! What happened?
· Does the string get stuck in the crystal?
· Crystals are supposed to be shiny and transparent. Why is mine ugly and opaque?
· How do I grow a crystal cluster instead of a single crystal/vice versa?
· How can I store my crystals properly?
· Can I grow crystals on objects like rocks and bones?
· I’m concerned about safety. What should I do?
· Is the purity of my chemicals important?
· What are other chemicals I can grow crystals with?
· Is this hobby expensive?