Advice on Live Rock

[Davidluster]

This is the third time attempt a posting but it keeps writing out. Something is fishy... (pun intended)

I have had 72 gal FOWLR for 6 months. Just bought used 110g that had tons of LR. Owner said it was out of water two weeks. I think it might have been longer. Sand smelled horrid so I am replacing it but the rocks have what appears to be dead corral or dead sponges. He had a reef tank. I am going to do FOWLR to start.

My question: do I need to break off all the black sponge looking things? They are about 2" x 4" x 2" in places. Also, the sump has some of this sponge appearance type stuff as well.

I will post pictures in the next post since it keeps messing up.


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[Davidluster]

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[Davidluster]

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[Davidluster]

This is what I started with:

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[jayball]

If they have been out of water for 2+ weeks than it is all dead. You want to get all of the dead stuff off or you will have a massive nutrient spike.

You may want to look into doing an acid bath or doing a more traditional curing process (cooking) to cycle all that gunk off of there if it is going into a running system.

 

[Davidluster]

If they have been out of water for 2+ weeks than it is all dead. You want to get all of the dead stuff off or you will have a massive nutrient spike.

You may want to look into doing an acid bath or doing a more traditional curing process (cooking) to cycle all that gunk off of there if it is going into a running system.

I am going to treat it as a brand new setup. Should I cook it in the tank with or without the sand in there?


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[jayball]

I am going to treat it as a brand new setup. Should I cook it in the tank with or without the sand in there?


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I would do it without sand. It will make the final cleanup easy without starting with a gunked up sandbed.

If you get an extra one or two cheapo powerheads you can really dial the flow up as well. keeping everything in suspention as it comes off of the rocks to be filtered out instead of setteling somewhere is a good thing.

 

[Davidluster]

Thanks so much!

 

[Bishopsnet]

Wait. I just got live rock and stup a tank. There was what looked like closed polyps on there. Was I supposed to inspect and take stuff off?