Killed my love rock?!

[anthmackin]

Hi just a quick question I wonder if I may have killed my live rock.

I knew I was going to be working away for a long time and maintenance on my tank was going to be impossible. I therefore sold all my fish and corals and even my tank itself, the live rock however I crammed into a small 70 litre tank with a heater and wave maker and left with my brother while I was away.

There has been no light on the tank other than small amount of sunlight and there has been no water changed made in 7 month. My brother however did top the tank up with dechlorinated tap water.

I am now back home and looking to start all over again, I'm just wondering would this live rock be ok to use to start the tank? Would it need seeding how is best about cycling my new tank? To look at the rock has faded and gone almost white, however there are spots of faded corralline algae. I have also notice that there is a hermit crab still crawling around the rock which seems to have survived the ordeal.

Thanks in advance

Anth

 

[Shawn O]

Dechlorinated tap water? It should be fine but may have absorbed a lot of crap from the tap water. What is the quality of the tap water? You may get a bunch of algae from it.

 

[anthmackin]

I'm not sure as it's at my brothers house, when I set my tank up I'll be using fresh ro as I have an ro filter it will just be a matter of transferring the rock to this temporary tank to my display. Suppose I could do regular 50% water changes with ro water while I'm sorting out my new tank since it's going to be a while because it's a DIY build

 

[Reef Frog]

I bet it's usable for sure. The whiteness of the rock is normal if you didn't have lights over the container. I keep a QT tank without lights running in an area with little ambient light & the rocks are bare compared to rock in the DT - but the bio filter is fine. I monitor it with as Seachem amonia badge.

But with that said, I would still verify by putting in a ammonia source like 100% ammonia to get the levels to about 2.0 and see if it gets processed quickly. The worst case scenario is you might need to cycle again but that's no big deal IMO.

 

[thegrun]

If you want to test to see if it needs to be cycled or not add enough pure ammonia to the water to bring the ammonia level up to 2ppm. If the rock still has a viable bacteria population the ammonia should drop back to zero within a day, if not the ammonia will start a new cycle. Once the ammonia does drop to zero the rock is good to go. Use pure ammonia without surfactants (available at most hardware stores). To be sure the ammonia does not contain surfactants shake the bottle and if it bubbles up like dish soap it has surfactants in it, pure ammonia will not have bubbles. To raise 100 gallons of water from 0 to 2 ppm ammonia you would need to add 0.8 grams (8 ml) of standard 10% pure ammonia.