Killing live rock

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KeepOnReefin

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I am restoring a friends tank. The green algae bloom is soooo bad (rock, sand, glass, equipment covered) that starting over is the only answer. What is the best way to kill the live rock to cure again so the green algae doesnt bloom? Thanks for your input

also, he is looking for cured live rock if anyone has any for sale
 
I have heard boiling as a method or if time is not a issue you could let the rock dry out for a few weeks and then boil the rock.

A serious clean up crew would help as well as an alternitive to shutting the tank down.
 
the best option in that instance is to add several lbs of swimming pool chlorine to the tank and let it circulate for a week, then do a 100% water change and add dechlorinate and test till there is no chlorine and you're good to go.
 
It is my understanding that LR absorbs some phosphate in tanks with PO4 problems (algae issues). I'm not sure if "cooking" rock gets rid of phosphate. You might try a search for cooking rock. It is basically keeping it in the dark and you run a skimmer, etc, for a while (I think -- I've never done it). It seems to me that using the same rock again in a tank will could leach out PO4 and cause the problems all over again unless you can get teh phosphate out of the rock. I could be all wrong on this -- but it is what I have heard.
 
cooking is done to remove the built up nutrient and force the bacteria in the rock to process it. all PO4 and NO3 are completely removed if cooked long enough. the chlorine bleach takes care of both instantly :D
 
i couldn't tell you scientifically but it causes the surface of the rock to shed where the PO4 is bound to the rock.
 
Am I understanding this right...?

Put the fish in a seperate tank.
Add the Pool additive
Keep the filters, skimmer, pumps running???
Do 100% water change.
Should I remove all the sand and add new?
What happens to the algae? Disintegrate?
 
remove any life you don't want to be wiped out.

add the pool chlorine and let the tank continue to run (all pumps/skimmers/etc...) for a week, during that time the tank will be disinfected, all life (including algae) will be killed. GHA turns clear almost instantly and starts to melt away. skimmer is gonna be a bit crazy during this time due to the change in water surface tension so keep an eye on it.

after a week the tank will be sterilized, do the 100% water change, add the dechlorinate and wait for the tank to measure no chlorine (use a test kit), after it measures zero chlorine it's just like a new tank and will start to cycle as bacteria start to form, you can seed the rock at that time if you want to.

I'd remove a DSB if there was one.
 
I'm not sure what you mean by "it works" -- you've measured the PO4 release from the rock -- both organic and inorganic?
 
i had a 120g Oceanic tank that had been a predator tank for several years with >1ppm PO4 and >100ppm NO3, it had GHA about 2" long on all the rock, and glass (it was BB, triggers tend to make a hell of a mess with sand). the only fish was a Clown Trigger who was reaching maturity so i sold her before she went postal.........

after the fish was gone i took a 5g bucket and added several large scoops (a big coffee can) of BioGuard Fast Dissolving Granular Chlorine, I'd guess 5 lbs give or take, i added several gallon of tank water to that bucket and used a 2x4 to mix it up...... it's quiet rough on the eyes and taste buds i might add so use proper ventalitation.........i then dumped that cocktail into the tank where it clouded up slightly and you could immediately see the GHA turning clear and starting to melt. i let the tank run from a weekend till the following weekend.


i then preceded to drain the tank, i then took my garden hose and blasted all the crud off the rocks that i could, siphoned that out and repeated a couple of times to get all the build up off the rock i could. i then filled the tank back up with tap water and added a hefty dose of Sodium Thiosulfate and let all the pumps run for several hours, the water was still a bit cloudy from the rock blasting so i drained it again and filled it back up with the hose from the tap again and added more Sodium Thiosulfate, it was fairly clear this time so i dumped a 100g box of IO in the sump and let it run, a few days later i checked and adjusted salinity. over the next few months it cycled, PO4 levels were undetectable with a kit, i didn't have the Hanna back then. the tank cycled, went through the normal diatom bloom when lights were turned back on and after about 3 months it was ready for fish.
 
If you did in fact get rid of all the phosphate built up in the rock (and old rock , especially in a tank with a sandbed, typically has lots of phosphate built up in it) it wasn't the chlorine that did it. I'm sure Stowers will chime in and let us know.

Is this the same tank you did the phosphate remover testing on?

And FWIW during cooking the bacteria doesn't process the phosphate it creates turgor pressure to push the phosphate out (or so the theory/hypothesis goes). It still needs to be removed from the water column.

Chris
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10780569#post10780569 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by fishdoc11

Is this the same tank you did the phosphate remover testing on?
Click to expand...

No, all that rock is currently cooking to preserve the tons of funa life that is on it.
 
So the chlorine treatment of rock does have some science behind it. Chlorine can react with organic phosphate esters to potentially transform the organic phosphate into an inorganic phosphate that may be removed more easily. In other words, phosphates are often bound to rock through an organic conjugation that could be broken by the addition of chlorine.

But heres why I think this method is a bad idea: Chlorine is a nasty, nasty chemical. If you want to hear about some horror stories of chemist getting hurt in the lab, research chlorine accidents. The reason is that chlorine is highly reactive and some of the reactions are not very reversible. In other words, when you treat your rock with high concentrations of chlorine, it will react with the organic life on the rock (destroying essentially all of it), but modifying the chemical makeup of the rock in a way that it will likely never be the same.

I also believe that their could be equally bad a problem of leaching chlorine for some time after this process is complete. Any free ionic chlorine will quickly be removed, but any that reacts in a semi-unstable form will be slowly released back to the tank.
 
Thanks, Chris! Additionally, I would think that any inorganic phosphate in the rock would not necessarily be removed by simple rinsing. That stuff would likely stay within the rock.
 
Yes you can read about chemists getting hurt in labs where they are playing with concentrations and mixes of chemicals the average Joe doesn't have access to, you don't read about many Duce Bigelow pool cleaners getting chlorine burns. also the Sodium Thiosulfate took care of any chlorine that remained in the tank after the water change.
 
Thiosulfate reacts with unbound chlorine, not bound chlorine to my knowledge. So any chlorine that bound could be released as I stated above regardless of how much thiosulfate you add. Also, since we are talking about live rock here: ammonia will likely be present in the water allowing the chlorine you add to react with the ammonia to create chloromines which are even more dangerous even at low concentrations. I think you would be suprized as too how many people get hurt by chlorine at the concentration used in the pool additives.

I'm not trying to say that it is likely you will hurt yourself treating your LR this way. My point is that your doing something unnecessary which could potentially cause big problems either for you or your reef tank.
 
cycled systems have minimal if any NH4 to react with and good bad or indifferent, the chlorine works, it kills the rock, the algae and EVERYTHING else in the tank which is what the poster wanted to do.

could a careless person get hurt doing it?? yeah, maybe, but they could also slip on some water on the floor from where they took the rock out of the tank to do it some other way and brake their neck and be dead, it's a possibility for everyone with a tank, but i doubt you'll find many people who aren't in this hobby because of that possibility.
 
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