Pukani Rock leacing PO4 like mad

I don't agree that the LC dosing process was laborious or tedious at all.

I treated 100lbs of pukani in 4 days with 4 water changes. It was actually remarkably easy and I'm very happy with the results at this point.

Sometimes putting the work in up front will make things far easier down the road. I felt, for me this was one of those situations
 
Thanks to threads like this, it was not a difficult process at all. Yes it was a bit of work, but no biggie. The rocks have been cooking in a 44 gallon brute with circulation in my garage for a while now. I took them out last weekend and gave them a good rinse. I've been adding a capful of LC once a week or once every other week. I still have a couple of months before my tank is ready, so I'm taking it slow. The rocks look fantastic! Very little came off of them this past weekend. My plan is once I know when my tank will be up and running, I'll start feeding the bin and maybe add a few pieces of LR to help seed the process. The amount of junk that comes off these rocks when you dip it in acid is amazing.

My thread where I documented it is below. Thanks again for this great thread!


http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2157623
 
You will need to cure the rock before checking for phosphate leaching. The organic debris might contain a fair amount of phosphate.
 
It means that curing live rock will be releasing phosphate from dead creatures, but once cured, the rock might still have phosphate attached to it depending on its exposure history to phosphate. :)
 
How I cured Pukani

How I cured Pukani

I just put it in new custom tank and ran 4 cups of GFO through active filter without lights with wet skimming and large water changes.

1-30 without lights

Day 1 0.21 PO4 by Hanna LR meter
Day 2 0.10 PO4 / 0.05 out of media reactor
Day 3 0.03 Phosphate
...
30-90 with 6 hours of halides

Day 30 change media

Add 30 pounds of cured live rock to refugium Next 4-5 weeks I had cyano bloom. The last clean up it flew right off rocks with suction tube and never came back. It was a thick black red mat with little energy left. Day 60 to 90 Coraline and corals are growing.

I will increase halides to 8 hours and maintain tank. Yes it really took 90 days!
 
Randy Holmes-Farley said:
It means that curing live rock will be releasing phosphate from dead creatures, but once cured, the rock might still have phosphate attached to it depending on its exposure history to phosphate. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks..I run an LPS tank which has abt 1-2ppm of phosphate and now I am planning to make a new tank,that will be a mixed reef tank..So what should be the best way to clean the rocks so that it doesnt leach phosphates??..My rocks are squeeky clean and coverd with coralline algae which I'm not ready to give me :wildone:
 
Any exposed calcium carbonate on those rocks will have a lot of phosphate bound to them.

If you do not want to kill the coralline, then treating the rock in a low phosphate solution is the best way. I've not heard from folks whether the long lanthanum treatments impact coralline or not.
 
I had the same hair algae bloom with dry rock when I started my 72. I gave up and switched to live rock, worked great for a while but same issues with algae growing from the cracks where detritus would settle. I now have ceramic rock and along with some rock rubble in a dark spot in my filter, I have no algea issues. When I tore down the dry rock, I broke apart a piece and it seemed like it was just hardened sand, not dead coral like I had thought. I think the acid wash is a must for dry rock! Anyone looking to do ceramic, Aquaroche is good stuff but pricey. The sculptured rocks are the best. To me they look better than some of the best dry rock structures. Very open and natural. Plenty of places to place coral. No deep crevices for detritus to accumulate. Again $$$ though.
 
Thought I posted already, not sure why it didn't show up.

Thanks to this thread and another on N-R, you guys probably saved me a lot of trouble down the road.

Here is what 10lbs of rock in a muriatic acid bath was putting out. This went on for a solid 20 minutes.
IMG_0819.jpg
 
Yeah, I could hear and see some stuff rattling around in the rock (pre bath) and after the bath, there was a lot of left over grime (slimy) that I hosed off. Hopefully this will prevent the PO4 issues that some have.
 
bertoni said:
You will need to cure the rock before checking for phosphate leaching. The organic debris might contain a fair amount of phosphate.
Click to expand...

That's why I chose to kill all the organic debris with acid and bleach.

rcharliesam said:
Thought I posted already, not sure why it didn't show up.

Thanks to this thread and another on N-R, you guys probably saved me a lot of trouble down the road.

Here is what 10lbs of rock in a muriatic acid bath was putting out. This went on for a solid 20 minutes.
IMG_0819.jpg
Click to expand...

I see your 10 pounds of muriatic acid bath and raise you 50 pounds...:lmao:

IMG_0219.jpg
 
rcharliesam said:
Yeah, I could hear and see some stuff rattling around in the rock (pre bath) and after the bath, there was a lot of left over grime (slimy) that I hosed off. Hopefully this will prevent the PO4 issues that some have.
Click to expand...

IMHO you would well served to be sure by dropping some rock in a fresh (small) batch of SW and let it sit for 24-48 hours then test for PO4.

I've seen other posts saying the acid bath didn't eliminate the problem
 
OregonReefer2 said:
IMHO you would well served to be sure by dropping some rock in a fresh (small) batch of SW and let it sit for 24-48 hours then test for PO4.

I've seen other posts saying the acid bath didn't eliminate the problem
Click to expand...

That's why you bleach them too...:thumbsup:

In all honesty, if someone's not going to keep up with maintenance, proper stocking limits and husbandry practices of the aquarium and its' supportive equipment, no amount of rock curing and acid/bleach baths will work. However, I've seen first hand how quickly an aquarium can jump start and look healthy by introducing properly cleaned rock and dry sand, seeding with a bacterial source like MB7 and then slowly stocking fish and corals throughout the first year. With proper quarantine of fishes and corals, the annoying surprises are minimized greatly. Not introducing a lot of the pests that cover live rock is a huge benefit. My diatom bloom barely lasted a couple of days and it was not by any means a deep brown that I see in many tanks. In three weeks coralline has started to show up on the rocks already and the only place I can figure it came from was a frag plug that had a little purple on it. I've never seen it develop that fast in any of my previous tanks, and especially didn't expect it in such a barren environment.

Like Dr. Malcolm said in Jurassic Park..."Life finds a way". Promoting the good life and trying to eliminate the introduction of as many bad ones as possible is the reason I chose to go this route. I'm not saying it's the best way, but for me it's showing a very promising start.
 
I just started my process. I started with RODI water yesterday. I didn't realize how bad these rocks can smell. I almost got sick when I walked in the room when I got in from work. I had to throw the curing bin out to the garage!


There was some serious gunk the water. The water was very green after just less than 24 hours. Gonna do a few more water changes with the LC in RODI water then move to SW. Doing FW to save on salt expense with all this initial gunk.

Question:
Should I bleach before going to SW?
Will that help at all.

Non-Related question:
My first DI chamber is almost half half spent after about 65 gallons of final water. My TDS into the DI chamber reads 20. Is this a normal rate of usage of color changing BRS DI Resin?

Thanks a bunch guys
Phillip
 
If you want to bleach the rock, I'd do it now. It might help remove some organic debris a bit more rapidly.

What is the TDS from the tap? 20 ppm is fairly high.
 
I wish I knew about this when I put pukani in my reef tank. While the tank has only been up for 7 months or so I did fight some cyano 3 months in because of PO4. I ran through a decent amount of GFO before I was able to contain the phosphates. the rock has settled down and I have not seen any more issues for it in months. But I keep GFO running to maintain low phosphates.
 
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