[shiffdaddy]

I have been doing a few experiments involving nickel and have gotten some unexpected results.  I first tested the nickel in hcl, hno3, and h2so4 and the nickel (II) chloride was an obvious success making a beautiful green powder when heat evaporated and forming nice crystals when allowed to dry slowly.  From there I wanted to make nickel sulfate since I absolutely love the color they produce.  I have tried 2 different ways of producing this.

1. Starting with nickel chloride I placed this in a stoichiometric amount of h2so4 with a slight excess of acid, the color of the solution changed to an aqua green color and this I made into 2 solutions one I let completely evaporate over a period of a week or so and the other I just evaporated on a hot plate.  This I let slowly evaporate which gave large clear blue crystals but mixed in were clear crystals.  The other half I heated to evaporate the solution which gave me a bright green powder which I kept a fan on and they slowly turned a nice aqua blue color.

2. Then starting with metallic nickel purchased from ebay I allowed h2so4 to dissolve the nickel completely (with heat).  Evaporating the solution gave me bright green crystals that looked very similar to nickel chloride but upon drying over a week they have turned slightly more blue.

Now what confuses me is I technically should have products that all look very similar but they all have a different shade of aqua.  BUT none of the aqua colors I produced look anything like the amazing colors I see online.  Is there anything I could do differently?

Also I am extremely careful with nickel salts as they are extremely toxic and have had far too much lab experience to be doing stupid things. (or just enough experience to make me dangerous ) jk btw

P.S. I also tried my hand at making hexamine nickel chloride but the nice dark navy blue color of the solution quickly turned back to its original bright green after evaporation

Ben