Preparing Rock

I have about 120 lbs of old live rock that has been sitting dry for 15 years. I recently gave it a nice muriatic acid bath and am now soaking it in a Brute in RODI water. I'm checking for phosphate (.21 and .23 readings about 6 weeks apart) and have a small pump and GFO in a bag in the Brute.

I'm still debating whether I will use this for my new build but I am wondering do I need to be curing the rock in salt water instead of just RODI water? My goal is to get the phosphate out at this time.
 
Thanks for the awesome write up. I have about 100lbs or so of live rock that has been sitting for about two years. It came out of my 75 gallon that crashed do to an uncontrollable seaweed infestation which was introduced into my tank as just a mere 1/4 inch long. Nothing would touch it i.e. Crabs, tangs, snails etc. I just kept picking and cleaning and it finally overran. But my question is how should I treat the rock? Because I can see dried out flakes or strands of the seaweed on the rock? I've brushed some of and have a few smaller rocks soaking in a five gallon bucket of water with a splash of bleach. Any solid advice?
 
choss said:
I have about 120 lbs of old live rock that has been sitting dry for 15 years. I recently gave it a nice muriatic acid bath and am now soaking it in a Brute in RODI water. I'm checking for phosphate (.21 and .23 readings about 6 weeks apart) and have a small pump and GFO in a bag in the Brute.

I'm still debating whether I will use this for my new build but I am wondering do I need to be curing the rock in salt water instead of just RODI water? My goal is to get the phosphate out at this time.
Click to expand...
Just keep finding it out in fresh RODI. when Your getting close to seeing up you can try to start cycling it in salt water, but it's probably easier to cycle it in your tank and do a regular start with leave sand, maybe a few new pieces of cycled rock, some table shrimp. But rinsing it several times is the best way to clean it out. After 15 years of being dry, you just need to blow off the dust[emoji12]

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DWattheBay said:
Thanks for the awesome write up. I have about 100lbs or so of live rock that has been sitting for about two years. It came out of my 75 gallon that crashed do to an uncontrollable seaweed infestation which was introduced into my tank as just a mere 1/4 inch long. Nothing would touch it i.e. Crabs, tangs, snails etc. I just kept picking and cleaning and it finally overran. But my question is how should I treat the rock? Because I can see dried out flakes or strands of the seaweed on the rock? I've brushed some of and have a few smaller rocks soaking in a five gallon bucket of water with a splash of bleach. Any solid advice?
Click to expand...
Pressure washer and then dunk in and out of 5 gallon buckets of RO water to shake em clean

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Day 47 - Still have slight ammonia reading even though, shrimp or ammonia has been added in over 2 weeks. Must be die off. Nitrite is reading between 2-4 on a Salifert test kit. Nitrates are between 50-100 (Salifert)

Can't get the photos to display.
 
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A lot of man-made rock products don't claim to have the same properties as reef rock such as being porous or capable of housing denitrifying bacteria. Is it necessary to cure it?
 
Do I need an air stone to cure the rock. Or is the bacteria anaerobic? I'm not using a skimmer just a pump to move water. Thanks
 
I would use a heater too. And keep curing. Definitely put somewhere there is no light to starve of unwanted pests. I did this for about 4-5 months. Killed everything off my rock.


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I recently cleaned old live rock that had dried up from a previous tank. I did a chlorine bath and then soaked and rinsed several times with fresh RODI. I currently have the rock in a trash can with about 10 lbs of new live rock from an established tank. I also used water out of the same established reef. Now all I have going is a power head to move water.

Do I need to do anything else to get this rock ready? I plan on moving into my display in a couple weeks and let it finishing the cycle there.

Should I add some light to jump start coraline?
 
3. Dry rock. You CAN put it all into the tank and wait 12 weeks for a cycle, but I don't recommend it.
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I'm curious why not? I'm starting fresh and don't mind putting 100+ of pukani is a trash can to cure or in the display tank. I struggle what the difference is between the two since I will do a complete water change either way. Thoughts?
 
I’m setting up a new 32 Gallon Bio Cube. This will be my first reef tank. Previous marine tanks back in the 70s and early 80s used UG filters and dead coral skeletons that had been bleached. I have some leftover pieces of coral skeletons. I also have some porous rocks that were taken from beaches on the Atlantic coast. Both of these have been used as decorative pieces in my garden and will be washed. I was hoping to use these along with some live rock, dry sand from Petsmart, and maybe some GARF grunge to liven things up a bit. I could use advice on how to do this. Also, any ideas on a good current source for good quality live rock? Thanks!
 
I'm questioning what I should do here. I took rock out of my tank this spring. I left it outside to dry out and it has since been sitting dry in my basement. Do I have to cycle this in a container with a heater and power head or could I rinse it and put it in my sump? There is some dead coral on it.
 
wbond said:
I'm questioning what I should do here. I took rock out of my tank this spring. I left it outside to dry out and it has since been sitting dry in my basement. Do I have to cycle this in a container with a heater and power head or could I rinse it and put it in my sump? There is some dead coral on it.
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How many pounds??

I'd throw it in a tub, heater, powerhead and a shrimp to cycle it. Let the dead stuff cook off before placing it into the system.
 
Cure it

Cure it

All the dead stuff that dried on your used to be live rock, has to be removed or it will poison the tank's inhabitants. That means you have to cure it away from the tank just as if it were new.
 
SFKINNC said:
All the dead stuff that dried on your used to be live rock, has to be removed or it will poison the tank's inhabitants. That means you have to cure it away from the tank just as if it were new.
Click to expand...

Agreed... i just finished bleaching my rock to remove organics and am now in the process of rinsing through RODI to leach out phos and and lingering bleach smell.

i will then dry the rock and start aquascaping
 
Planning on upgrading from a 100 with close to 100 pounds of rock to roughly a 250 gallon display with 65 gallon sump. I have a few questions.
I plan on doing a flatworm exit, a peroxide, and some sort of freshwater or bayer dip as I transfer the rock. The exit would be of course for my small flatworm problem. Peroxide would be to get the hair algea from the spots I just can't reach, and Bayer / freshwater for the bristle worms that have decided to take over (I started with 3x acid bathed and 2x bleached rock, and bought 1 friggen rock from LFS holy hell).
Will any of this affect the bacteria in the rock? I don't really want to do a full 12 week cycle before I can start slowly moving fish over, my heaters, pumps, and powerheads, even half my lights are all moving over with me. Which means I'm not running both at the same time (well within a few days of each other at least).
Any ideas?
 
so question. i t seems pretty simple but im still a bit unclear. my tank is been set up and cycling for 1 week. 20 lbs live sand and about 40 lbs of cured live rock...

i found a person that tore down their tank, no way to prove it to be true, anyway. his rock was live with corals 9 days ago from today, rock was placed in 5 gallon bucks of tank water for three days, and now have been out of the water for 5 days now. i contacted him and asked about the rock and he said it is now dry rock cause its been out of the tank. what should i do with this rock? he says since the time frame out of the tanks water i could just simply..get some soft brushes and clean the rock really well then add....

is there a rule of thumb for live rock that has been out for only a few days,
 
I just finished bleaching and acid bathing my rock. Its sitting in warm RODI with some GFO running. First PO test showed .12. What should I target to get it down to before adding to the tank?
 
Second test today and its down to .03. Is it possible the rock is that clean at this point that I can safely add it to the tank?
 
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