Cooking Live Rock?

[calli]

Do cook or don't? I was just going to put in non cured rock to the water and allow the cycle to start?

now I am reading that you should cook your rock? or do they mean cook additional rock?

 

[mattpenn]

do you already have any livestock?

 

[Allanira]

If you are just setting up your tank for the first time your lr can cook/cure in your tank after that your gonna need to cook/cure lr seperately. If your tank has been set up and gone through its cycle then you need to cook it seperately. It all depends on if your just starting out or if its been up for a bit. You need to clean off the lr as best you can before putting it in the tank though. That as a precaution that you might get mantis shrimp or other nasties and you can get some of the dead stuff off. It will still cure like you want it but giving it a good swish in a bucket of saltwater before putting it in the tank will help you out a little. Plus you wont have as much nasties floating in the tank. Good luck. Hope I helped.

 

[alextheromanian]

im not sure what you mean by cook...i certainly hope youre not reffering to it as boiling live rock.

 

[calli]

LOL no not at all alex... thank you allanira... that is what I wanted to know..

 

[Sk8r]

"cooking' means leaving it in a bin under saltwater with a circulation pump and no light for a while.

Personally, especially since I have a small tank, thus not likely to import large rocks, I don't cook new rock, nor ever have, except what sadly happened during the house move. From the start, I used uncured wonderful encrusted, creature-inhabited live rock with no troubles except a little algae and aiptasia, which I have handled.
When my live rock died during the move, i was so disheartened I just put it in, in a fit of temper, dripping with slime and dead things as it was.
my tank cycled within the week and has been great since. Enough life survived in the cracks adn crannies to give me back many of the species I thought I'd lost.

And what else survived this 'cooking'? One aiptasia and a sprig of caulerpa.

 

[jon56048]

you could do muric acid bath that would start your rock off to good start

 

[MinnFish]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13027720#post13027720 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jon56048
you could do muric acid bath that would start your rock off to good start

:eek1: You are kidding, right? Muriatic Acid or Hydrochloric Acid is very dangerous and highly corrosive. In the wrong hands, can cause injury to persons or property. I would not suggest the use of this in any way. Always think safety first.

 

[jon56048]

Safety first where glass and gloves for this one
what I did was use garden hose to rinse the rock then I took new trash can and put water in there then I add the rock and then the muric acid let sit for a while and then rinse it again with a garden hose and then after that I let it dry and after it dried I took 5 g bucket and mix bleach with water and dip the rock in there and then rinse it again and the I had let it site in the sun for day or so and then I had took food safe 55g drum and filled it with ro/di water and salt and let it mix with mag 5 pump and then add the rock and let it sit for few day or on tell your ready and there you go new rock to start you off with

Make sure you do 10/1 for muric acid and water 1g muric acid for every 10g of water

And for the bleach I did one cup for 5g of water if there are wrong then please chime in with your info. This is what I was told to do and it seem to have work put very well

For give me spelling and grammar it’s not the best

 

[calli]

well in that case I should just go steal rocks from the garden.

 

[newbie-to-reef]

If you are going to kill everything on the liverock why in the world do you but lr and not base rock?

 

[newbie-to-reef]

oops, buy not but

 

[jon56048]

you can bring the rock back after while but this gets you nice clean start and you can alway use live rock to bring the dead rock back

 

[jon56048]

sorry please remove this post