Live rock stinks bad!

jpc763

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I am breaking my 125g established tank. I removed my 150# of live rock into a rubbermaid trash barrel. I put a powerhead in there and a heater and then covered it with the lid.

Friday (5 days later) the can reaked bad!

I did a water change and put more power heads in there.

Did I screw up by putting the lid on?
Am I cycling the rock again?
Will it kill the critters in the rock (zoas, shrooms, sponges, pods, stars, etc.)?
How can I minimize the stench?

Thanks, John
 
I would think closing the container up and having zero light was the cause of the issues. If you have that much rock in a rubbermaid trash barrel with only one powerhead, you could have also made it worse that way. Sounds like this was some pretty established live rock, I would venture to assume the combo of no light, no air flow and low water flow caused it. Without seeing the rock but from how you described it, to me it sounds like you had some decent die-off.
 
Ugh. That was what I was afraid of. I have no idea why I did that!

I now have a magnum 8 koralia and a QuiteOne 3000 circulating water.

So am I going to lose everything?

Options? 20% water change daily?
 
The increase in flow will definitely help. As far as the losses, I really couldnt begin to wonder without knowing roughly how much life was on the rock and how bad the water got. Daily water changes will most likely help since spikes in ammonia and nitrite will come along with the presumed die-off, so removing some of the bad water and replacing it with fresh salt water will help mitigate some of the spike. You wont lose everything since you can keep rock in tubs for a while, but the way you kept it definitely is cause for concern if you wanted to keep everything there.
 
No, no lights. It is rock with mushrooms, zoas and sponges on it.

I'm just holding it until Saturday.
 
If it will be that long until you have them under some lights, you may want to consider finding an interim solution to keep some lighting on the rock. 5 more days is a while with no light, especially since it has already been about 8 days now.
 
sounds like some methane from the live rock... probably from the pieces that were touching the live sand when it was in the tank for years....

is the live rock black on some parts? That would be the methane portion... probably just fuming a bit, but it should be fine, i would say dont worry about the lights as that wont help.
 
Still do daily water changes then?

Yes, some of the rock was black as it was imbedded in the sand.

And thanks for everyone's help.
 
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