How to cure dry/live rock!

[iperry023]

Hi, I am a beginner who has been doing pretty good research on how to begin a marine aquarium. I'm also doing it on a budget. I received a 55-gallon stand and aquarium from a friend and have begun planning my purchases and steps that I will go through setting it up.

Right now, my biggest curiosity is how I should cure my live rock. Also, I'm slightly confused on the differences between curing and cycling. I am going to order 50 Lbs of pukani rock for aquascaping. I understand that this will leave me with lots of extra, but in being budget friendly one thing I want to splurge on is how the permanent decoration of the tank will finally look, and who knows what I'll do with the rest.

I want to purchase one good sized live rock to include in the tank to get some good coralline growth. When I cure my dry rock should I cure the live rock in with it? But if I do that I fear I might start a cycle, from the death of the organics on it (which I will take the time to clean off as much as I can before this). But I also understand that a cycle would start with the pukani dry rock anyways? Is a cure the same thing as a cycle? Except allowing only their good bacteria to remain by the end of it to start a new cycle in the new tank? How necessary is curing? I am excited but will be patient to get it up and running, first I was factoring in 4-6 extra weeks for cycling but now with both processes possibly 6-10!

I'm just not sure, I thank you in advance for any advice!


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[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

My number one suggestion would be to start curing the dry rock as soon as possible. After two months I could have easily cured my rock for several more months. Do it in a dark place, preferably a basement in a container such as a Brute garbage can. It is very similar to cycling, but when the rock is done curing you will toss all of the water. The goal is to get all of the dead organic material break down off the rock. The first week stinks to high heaven, and the process is slow.

 

[pyithar]

curing and cycling are basically the same. the purpose is to grow beneficial bacteria on the rocks to process ammonia which is toxic to animals. you can start the cycle (of the tank) with all dry rocks. you just need ammonia source to start the cycle.

 

[iperry023]

So would I cure my dry and live rock in the same Brute bucket? And as I'm curing it, I'll have to change the water in the bucket at least once a week, right?


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[gone fishin]

If you actually have live rock then it should have bacteria colonized on it, that is why it costs more than dry dead rock. This rock could go directly into your tank. True live rock from the ocean will not only have bacteria but will have other life on it such as sponges, feather dusters, mollusks or bivalves.

Dead rock depending on where it came from and the condition could be clean with not much in the way of dead or decaying organic matter. Also depending on the rock it may have some phosphate bound in the rock that will leech out over time.

During the "curing" process folks will use a container other than the display tank. During this process if there is any dead organic matter left on the rock then it will decay and bacteria will colonize the rock. If the rock is clean then an ammonia source will need to be added to the rock to start this process. In addition some folks will add some chemicals to draw out the phosphate from the rock.

If you were to "cycle" your tank then the process would be similar as above except it would take place in your tank not in a separate container.

There is a sticky called setting up at the top of the page, look for the big red arrow. It is full of good info that you may find of interest. Good luck just my 2 cents.

 

[CStrickland]

people use the words interchangeably, so you have to look at the context of whatever you're reading to understand the process they are talking about. There are 3 diff tasks that people do to their rocks:

1) grow bacteria - this is easy. You're getting a population of nitrogen processing bac going ahead of adding animals so that when they poop and pee and breathe toxic ammonia it doesn't stay that way and burn their gills. You can do this in a bucket, or right in the tank (bacteria will also grow on surfaces like glass and pipes etc.). It's just a matter of adding some nitrogen and giving the bacteria time to reproduce, there's different methods but in the end it doesn't make a diff what you do and it's going to take a few weeks. A bit of live rock will speed this up by adding a starter population.

2) clean the rock - this is harder to predict because diff rocks are diff "dirtiness." Whatever dead stuff you don't remove physically by scrubbing or burning with acid, needs time to rot away into the water by bacterial means. Similar to 1 the bacteria populate and eat it by decaying into ammonia and then other forms of nitrogen until it's gone so it isn't adding ammonia to water that has fish in it.

3) remove phosphates - this is important for you because Pukani is notorious for having phos in it. If you don't get it out before you add the rock to the tank, it will come out in the tank. People who skip this step using Pukani rock often suffer months and months of algae struggles. It's less of an issue with other types of rock.

Most people who use Pukani rock take the time to dip it in acid first to burn off the organics and open the pores of the rock and remove the phos-laden outer layer. Then they soak it in phos-less water in a separate container from the tank to encourage the phos to leach out. Folks that don't do this wish they did. Theres a few threads on how. Start by searching "revitalize live rock" and "cooking live rock" Whichever process you choose to remove the phosphates, the time that the rock spends underwater leaching the phos will do double-duty growing bacteria that cycle nitrogen.

 

[iperry023]

Awesome, I appreciate all of your guys' advice! When curing the live rock, will it kill the pests that I don't want in my tank while still allowing the good bacteria to grow? And what type of acid is used to remove the phosphates from the pukani Rock? I will look more into those threads also, so thank you for your direction!


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