Cycling tank questions

[Lilbitreefer]

OK so I need some advice on cycling my tank. I have a 120 gallon I want to get cycling. I currently have a much of pukani I got from BRS during in a rubber maid. I read a lot about pukani leaching a lot of phosphate and I wanted to combat the amount of phosphate leached by letting it cure in a rubbermaid for as long as possible. I plan on cycling the tank using the Red sea cycle kit. Can I use the kit to cycle the tank and then add the Pukani when it is cured more? Or is that just making more work for me. I am worried if I add the rock after I cycle the tank it will just cause it to go through another cycling process. I have had the pukani curing about 2 months now, I just realized I did not have enough rock so bought more and tossed that in to the buch. So now I have some rock with a 2 month curing and another that has only been curing for 2 weeks. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[cheucklate]

There's always a chance of a slight cycle after adding new rocks to the DT. You have better odds however if they are already cured. If it bothers you, why not add the newer rocks slowly one by one and test for spikes.

 

[Lilbitreefer]

good idea!

 

[cheucklate]

It's probably best to add them all at the same time though for aquascaping and stabilizing your bacteria population. You can always do acid bath with muratic acid or vinegar to speed up the curing process since most of the phosphates being leached are on the exterior of the rocks.

Off to a good start though. Good luck!

 

[Lilbitreefer]

How do you do the vinegar bath? Also some of the older rocks look to be growing coraline algae I keep see small patches or small dots of reddish purple...not sure it is purple and some places it looks spiky though any thoughts.

 

[cheucklate]

If you search for "acid bath dry rock, you can get a better idea as to other peoples success. I did 100% vinegar, some people say 50% vinegar, 50% water. I cured it for a few days or until there is no more acidic bubbling. There's probably still some dead organics after the bath but phosphates will be drastically reduced. An idea would be to acid bath the newer rocks then dump them into the remaining bin of dry rocks.

As for the coraline algae, they will probably die off eventually if it's just sitting in rodi water. Continue to do water changes and measure phosphates until it reads 0. Having pumps at full blast and the heater at a high temperature can speed up the curing process as well. Lots of things you can do, don't stress out too much

 

[Lilbitreefer]

Sounds good. Thanks