How can I clean live rock??

[blennymower]

I have a couple of live rocks that I will soon introduce into my tank. I currently have them in a qaurantine tank with a HOB filter. I want to make sure that when I put them in the DT they're not carrying anything on them. What can I do?


I've read that heating the water up ["cooking the rocks"] will kill any hitch hikers. How high must the temperature be??

 

[freddy4130]

Do you just want to "kill" everythign so that you are not going to have any hitchhikers? I mean. In that case, you will kill everything. How much LR do you already have? If a lot, and thre is not much to kill, then you can do whatever you want to kill it. Leave it out in the sun for a couple days, boil it, put it in the oven, whatever. If you don't have a stable tank already with lots of LR it is going to cause a cycle I would bet. But if you do, then do your worst.

 

[blennymower]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14709739#post14709739 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by freddy4130
Do you just want to "kill" everythign so that you are not going to have any hitchhikers? I mean. In that case, you will kill everything. How much LR do you already have? If a lot, and thre is not much to kill, then you can do whatever you want to kill it. Leave it out in the sun for a couple days, boil it, put it in the oven, whatever. If you don't have a stable tank already with lots of LR it is going to cause a cycle I would bet. But if you do, then do your worst.

hahaha Yeah If I wanted EVERYTHING dead I would do just that and leave it out in the sun.

For example, my in my last setup I had taken some rocks out and put them in a tank for a month or so where I comletely forgot about them. They had grown a bunch of different animals and algae I had never seen, one of them were a sponge-like animal. I put it in the tank and they grew everywhere.

I want to elimanate any undesirable pests.

 

[freddy4130]

Let me know if you figure out how to spot kill stuff inside LR. I am very interested. Would not heating the rock kill all the good with the bad? Or is that your question. How do I kill the bad and keep the good? If so, I have no clue. Like I asked before, if your tank is established and you already have a lot of LR, then it makes no difference if everything on the rock dies. As long as you don't have any nasties in your tank already, all that will colonize your newly introduced rock will be the goods.

 

[blennymower]

Well I don't know if you can spot kill or not, that's why I'm asking. I read on several threads on people "cooking" they're rocks. I don't have a lot of LR so all is in the quarantine. I left one of the rocks out in the open for a couple of days and then put it in a backet while periodically changing its water. It just doesn't look as nice when you kill EVERYTHING. The rock looks like its been bleached.

 

[freddy4130]

Yeah, I tihnk you are going to find that you can't kill some of the stuff without killing all of it. Unless you can see those things you don't want and you "poison' them. And that all depends on what it is. If you 'cook" the rock it is going to kill off everytyhing.

The rock you left outside looks like it was bleached because it is naturally white and you killed all the crap off it. If you have them time, just leave it in the bucket and time will tell if you have bad hikers or not. If you do, you could always kill all that rock and seed it with rock you know does not have bad hikers in it.

 

[OwenInAZ]

I doubt you can spot kill. Either you're going to get rid of everything on them, or nothing IMO. Also, cooking doesn't refer to getting it hot IIRC, just that you put it in a tub of saltwater with a lid to prevent light getting in and some circulation. Things will begin to die off, so you change water to keep it from getting too polluted.

If it were me, I don't think I'd worry about it, once I figured out if there were any visible pests or not. Biodiversity is rarely a bad thing in this hobby

 

[DragonFish]

The term "cooking" the rock has nothing to do with high heat. Basically what you do is put the rock in Rubbermaid or other container with normal saltwater, a heater (set to normal tank temp) and a circulation pump. You then cut off all light so it is completely dark and leave it that way for a few months. That will kill all photosynthetic algae but leave the beneficial bacteria. It won't help with hitchhikers like mantis or pistol shrimp or crabs but you can be pretty sure you won't have any nuisance algae on it.

 

[blennymower]

ooh I see. That term is misleading... Good thing I didn't buy those heaters!

 

[freddy4130]

LOL.