evolutionZ
New member
Hi guys, i just want to share this with you guys as im preparing for a rescape. i ended up with a bunch of old school live rock out of a farm (im not going to named it because it ain't their fault).
The rocks were great! full of life, purple coralline and all sorts of other algae.. I then proceed the process of curing or some will say 'cooking' them.
I first removed any sponges i see and any visible algae.. Then i did a 5min high salinity (1.04) dip to force
any pest to come out of the rocks. it wasn't very exciting when all i see was 2 crabs and no worms.
The rocks are soaked in a tub with a power head.
The water i used was NSW (natural Sea Water) and to my surprise, the NSW was VERY high in Po4. I used a nyos kit and it was way bluer then the 1ppm color (which was the highest it could read), so the next morning i swapped out the water in the pail with new salt mix and decided i should do a longer high salinity dip since im not satisfied with the amount of pest im seeing. I went on to increase the salinity to 1.04 and left the rocks in the tub for 9 hours with a powerhead.
When i removed the cover, the smell was horrible! and the water was brownish. I got to work and removed all the rocks and slushed the rocks in the pail before removing, transferred them to new pail with 1.035 salinity.
And what a shock i got when i empty the pail and saw the massive amount of pest!
i tried to estimate and what i got is:
~15 bobbit worms (2-3 of them were at least 15cm long)
~1 mantis shrimp
~5 pistol shrimp
~ 40 bristle worms
~ 10 weird never seen before worms
~ 5 crabs
I was expecting to have alot of bristle worms but the amount of bobbit worms were astonishing. and all these came out of 15kg of live rocks!
I am going to continue the high salinity dip for another 24 hours to ensure as little pest as possible.. and im kinda skeptical by the amount of crabs that died.
At this point, after the next round of high salinity dip, once i see no pest are dying and assuming the rocks are almost pest free( i guess all can agree its almost impossible to have pest free rocks without drying them right) i will change to normal salinity salt mix water and cycle with bacteria from my current tank for the next 4-6 weeks before preparing for a rescape.
The rocks were great! full of life, purple coralline and all sorts of other algae.. I then proceed the process of curing or some will say 'cooking' them.
I first removed any sponges i see and any visible algae.. Then i did a 5min high salinity (1.04) dip to force
any pest to come out of the rocks. it wasn't very exciting when all i see was 2 crabs and no worms.
The rocks are soaked in a tub with a power head.
The water i used was NSW (natural Sea Water) and to my surprise, the NSW was VERY high in Po4. I used a nyos kit and it was way bluer then the 1ppm color (which was the highest it could read), so the next morning i swapped out the water in the pail with new salt mix and decided i should do a longer high salinity dip since im not satisfied with the amount of pest im seeing. I went on to increase the salinity to 1.04 and left the rocks in the tub for 9 hours with a powerhead.
When i removed the cover, the smell was horrible! and the water was brownish. I got to work and removed all the rocks and slushed the rocks in the pail before removing, transferred them to new pail with 1.035 salinity.
And what a shock i got when i empty the pail and saw the massive amount of pest!
i tried to estimate and what i got is:
~15 bobbit worms (2-3 of them were at least 15cm long)
~1 mantis shrimp
~5 pistol shrimp
~ 40 bristle worms
~ 10 weird never seen before worms
~ 5 crabs
I was expecting to have alot of bristle worms but the amount of bobbit worms were astonishing. and all these came out of 15kg of live rocks!
I am going to continue the high salinity dip for another 24 hours to ensure as little pest as possible.. and im kinda skeptical by the amount of crabs that died.
At this point, after the next round of high salinity dip, once i see no pest are dying and assuming the rocks are almost pest free( i guess all can agree its almost impossible to have pest free rocks without drying them right) i will change to normal salinity salt mix water and cycle with bacteria from my current tank for the next 4-6 weeks before preparing for a rescape.
