Cooking Liverock

[Plankt0s]

One of my customers is changing to a new tank and he gave me his old one. He had about 100 lbs of rock in there and it was all covered in hair algae and aiptasia so when i brought it home I put it in covered rubbermaid totes with air bubling into the bottom of the tubs. they have been in my closet with a blanket over them for about 3 weeks and all the hair algae is dead but the aiptasia are still alive...my god these things will not die. the tubs are cold with no light at all and no water changes the nitrogen levels are all good (a little to my suprise, I thought there might be more Nitrate) what do I have to do to get rid of them... I do have about another 1.5 2 months before his tank is done but I was wondering if anyone had any ideas that dont take as long. there are literally thousands of them on these rocks so joes juice isnt an option and I dont want to use copper because these rocks are live and they are going into a reef, I dont want to put them into one of my tanks and rely on peppermint shrimps or a copperband butterfly to get rid of them because I want them all dead before I put them back in his new tank.

 

[Plankt0s]

:BUMP: anyone?

 

[dippin61]

gonna be hard to get rid of them that way. Also when cooking, you should have a powerhead in there, not just bubbles. Your gonna get a lot more die off if you dont. Also, you should keep the temp up a bit, the colder it is, the longer it will take the algae and stuff to die off.

personally, what i would do, since you already have them seperated from anything else, is, just start nailing them will joes juice as you see them, or even try putting a kalk paste or epoxy over them.

 

[Plankt0s]

I am just trying to avoid going through all of that but I think you're right I'm just going to have to grin and bear it. I have the temp cold because my closet is and I don't have 3 submersible heaters that I can spare right now.

 

[dermer]

i have used boiling hot water in a siringe to kill them workd great for me

 

[vessxpress1]

I've been cooking about 50 lbs of live rock for the last month and a half too. How old is your nitrate test kit? I ask only because I can't seem to get the nitrates down in my cook tub. My rock had bryopsis on a lot of it. I've swished and rinsed all the rock in 3 seperate buckets, 3 times already and I've done 3, 100% water changes of the tub water. The third one just a few days ago and my nitrates are right back up to 10 ppm. The algae's been long gone for a while now.

If I was you, I'd take all the rock out and chip off the worst areas of aiptasia and throw the pieces away. With a good chisel, you can really limit the amount of lost rock while eliminating the worst areas. Then I'd put a power head or two and a heater in the tub. Get it warmed up and get some good flow. Re-test your params and change the water as necessary. Line up some buckets with new salt water in them and rinse each rock well. Change 100% of your tub water occasionally. Then once the water starts clearing up, throw 4 or 5 peppermint shrimps in there. With no other food to eat, they'll be forced to eat all the aiptasia. There's a good chance they'll clear it all up. Then keep a few to put in the tank to make sure none come back. That's really going to be your best bet. It's hard to find perfectly clean liverock that won't have aiptasia on it. I had a few growing in my tank and then I got 4 peppermints. They didn't eat the aiptasia right away but since then, I've never seen one growing again. I don't like peppermint shrimp because they're bullies and can be a real pain but if they control aiptasia, I can live with them.
Covering the rock in kalk paste will probably work too. Cooking liverock is a lot of work, to do it right. You'll go through a lot of salt.

 

[vessxpress1]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9194888#post9194888 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by biowerks
I am just trying to avoid going through all of that but I think you're right I'm just going to have to grin and bear it. I have the temp cold because my closet is and I don't have 3 submersible heaters that I can spare right now.

I've got my cook tub in the basement with the rock and 14 gallons of water in it. The basement is around 50 degrees I'm guessing. I've got a MJ 1200 and a 200w heater in there with the lid on it, covered with a blanket. The whole tub is sitting on 1-1/2" of that pink foam so the cold concrete floor doesn't draw heat away from it. I keep the water at 80 degrees.