Advice on what to do with dead rock...

Tuscaquatics

Tuscaquatics

Active member
I've been out of the hobby for a few years and I'm going to fire up another reef tank soon since I've moved to a house.

I have all of the rock I used in my old tank but its dead and will have to be worked with before I use it again.

A lot of the rock was pulled from an existing tank and stupidly dropped into mine. After I did that I had non stop problems with bubble algae, bryosis and other alga and I could never get my phosphates down to acceptable levels. I feel like that had something to do with the rock and it leaching phosphates.

My question is how would you deal with this rock before using it? Should I just cook it in the dark for a couple months? Or should I consider doing an acid bath to take off a layer or two?

My own research online has left me without a consensus opinion. Some people say to never use acid while others say it's the only way to truly clean it.

Thoughts?

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I would cure it for a couple of months in the dark. Change the water periodically.

I bought dried pukani and it had nasty stuff on it, I cured it for about 6 weeks with periodic water changes


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You could bleach bath them and good rinse with a sun dry, cook the rock, vinegar bath with rinse, get a nice good cleaning and scrub.

Things I would try.

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I don't want to buy new. I'm going to use this as base rock and add some live rock when I get this cured.

As for the bleach, I know this will kill most anything on the rock but will it do anything about the phosphates? I think not. This is my main problem. My levels were crazy high the last time even with a fuge and oversized skimmer.

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Your best bet then is to cure them in a tub with salt water and keep changing water until phosphates are just about undetectable.


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speedo2wet said:
Your best bet then is to cure them in a tub with salt water and keep changing water until phosphates are just about undetectable.


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Click to expand...
That could literally take years, though. Like I said I had this rock in my tank before and even with minimal feeding, an oversized skimmer and a healthy fuge my phosphates would never go away. I feel like this rock is just filled with it and it's gonna leach out for a long time.

Maybe I should just get new....

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Mrw1936 said:
How big is the tank? How much rock are we talking about?
Click to expand...
The old tank was a standard dimension 75 gallon. This time I'm gonna keep the stand and get a rimless tank with the same footprint.

Were talking about around 100-150 lbs of rock, probably.

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Tuscaquatics said:
Never messed with it. It binds with the phosphates, right? What about just running GFO while I cure it?

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Click to expand...


Wouldn't that give you same results as just changing the water? Seems to me that all you would be doing is taking the phos out of the water, not the rock IMO.
How about dosing NOPOX and making sure you are blowing out you rocks and skimming heavily?


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I believe LC works by binding with the phos and crystallizing. You would then filter out the crystals. From what I have heard, this works well and pretty fast.


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MikeyAl said:
Wouldn't that give you same results as just changing the water? Seems to me that all you would be doing is taking the phos out of the water, not the rock IMO.
How about dosing NOPOX and making sure you are blowing out you rocks and skimming heavily?


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Click to expand...
Well from what I understand the phosphates want to achieve an equilibrium between what's in the water and what's in the rock. So as long as there are equal amounts of phosphates in the water and rock they will stop leaching.

Yes water changes would help but I'm thinking GFO would be cheaper and more efficient.

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Do some reading in the reef chemistry forum. I think you'll find that the LC is cheaper and more efficient.
 
Hitch08 said:
Do some reading in the reef chemistry forum. I think you'll find that the LC is cheaper and more efficient.
Click to expand...
Yeah I might have to look into the LC. I just meant GFO would be cheaper and more efficient than water changes.

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Do the acid bath. I believe it's a 10:1 solution. Use gloves and eye protection. I just dump the acid water solution when done onto the grass in the backyard but some people like to neutralize the acid solution with baking soda first. Seems like kind of a waste of time effort and money to me.

I would do the acid bath and then put the rock in bins with RO water for several weeks changing out the water and testing for phosphates.
 
I do this all the time. I leave em over night in a bleach bath, (kill anything still alive) rinse them clean, then 3 days in muric acid. (basically nuke and dissolve anything dead on the rock, last cure the rock in a tub with a heater and a powerhead untill ammonia and nitrites are 0 and nitrates test less then 10ppm
 
Many years ago I had a similar issue. What I did was 3 days of bleach, followed by 3 days of vinegar, followed by 3 days of RO water, then 3 days in the sun.

I then put them back in a tub with fresh RO water and let them sit for 3 days. Then I drained that water and added salt + ro and then cured them til they cycled.

In my old 135 gallon tank talking 2011/2012 I had really bad hair algae and this cured it.
 
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