I bleached my rocks. Now what

[Bdial]

I'm replacing a little less than half my current rocks with some old really big rocks. The rocks were sitting outside for well over a year and I really like the looks. So I sprayed them off and brushed some residual off. Then I let each rock soak in a bleach saturated solution for about a day. I rinsed them off again and let them sit in the sun for a day or two. Now, because of space I am soaking one at a time in ro with a ton of chlorine out in it and a powerhead. How long til the rock is tank safe. These will be going in an established aquarium. I'm thinking about doing a muratic acid soak too. Is that overkill?

Here's the new rocks post bleach dip.

 

[thegrun]

The acid is good if you had high phosphates in the tank the old rock sat in, if not there is no need to give it an acid bath. I would soak it in a tub of RO/DI water with Prime or one of the other ammonia neutralizing products at 4 times the standard dosage. Let it sit for four or five days, then sun dry. If there is still any smell of chlorine repeat the process.

 

[Bdial]

Awesome thanks!

 

[d-man]

Yeah, only need to soak it a day. The Prime neutralizes any left over residue almost immediately. Then pull it out, and rinse off with hose, and let dry for a day or so. Simple enough.

 

[Bdial]

I'm not using prime. I'm using an aqueon product I think. Or maybe Api. I can't remember. But it was 1ml for 10gallons to treat it. I put 10 in about 8 gallons I think.

 

[toothybugs]

Sodium hypochlorite (Clorox) will break down on its own after a couple days once it's diluted. Let it dry for a couple days and it'll be fine, no need to worry. If you look on the bottle closely, there is a stabilizer in it, usually sodium hydroxide in a minute amount. Diluting the bleach more than about 2x destabilizes the solution. A little heat (warmth of the sun is enough) will destabilize the molecule too.

You can check this yourself if you like, pour a glass about a third full of bleach, then top it off with water and just let it sit for 3-4 days. It should be much less colored and smell very little if at all. I did it with a cleaning solution that I didn't use up a few weeks ago, after the weekend was over my bottle was no longer yellow-green but rather pretty colorless.

 

[Bdial]

I thought it dissipated on its own. Thanks again. My arch rock is sunbathing now. The other rocks have no bleach odor any more either. But when I poured the rodi on them they just smelled like wet rocks. Better safe than sorry. Thanks for the replies