Questions about Curing rock yourself

[supermarvin76]

I have jsut recieved in the mail a book By Anthony Calfo and Bob Fenner called Reef Inverts - Care and Compability.

I have read Anthony Calfo's Book of Coral Propagation already.

I was thinking of buying "already cured" rock and jsut letting it run for awhile (approx 3-4 weeks by itself) in the tank before putting anything else in.

Now reading this book I am thinking of buying "uncured rock" and doing it myself.

Some questions:

1. I want to leave the rock cure with no light. How will that effect coraline growth?

2. What do I need to be watchful for?

Any other tips / suggestions would be great.

Thanks

 

[JamesJR]

If you can get good uncured rock than that is definately the way to go. you get to pick what stays on the rock and what doesn't.
One thing I would do is before you cure the rock you should scrub off any dead sponges. Chances are they are too far gone to be saved and many sponges have toxic metabolites so I would just scrub them off because they will just foul the water anyway.
Get a bin for the rock and a powerful skimmer and just keep pulling the stuff out of the skimmer. Sipon off the stuff off of the bottom and change the water.

 

[supermarvin76]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8189894#post8189894 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by JamesJR
If you can get good uncured rock than that is definately the way to go. you get to pick what stays on the rock and what doesn't.

How do I do this? Aside from just looking at stuff and hoping it doesn't die, wont the water parameters determine what stays and what goes?

 

[JamesJR]

How do you scrub off the dead sponges? wear some gloves, Get a bucket of seawater and take the rock and just gently brush the area off with a toothbrush. and then dip the rock in the bucket of seawater and kind of move it around and the dead stuff will just fall off into the water.

 

[Fredfish]

1. put rock in salt water
2. provide heat and circulation (lighting is optional)
3. Run carbon to remove any nasty metabolites if you are worried about that.
3. let sit for a month or so

You have 'cured' rock

I have never liked the word curing because it implies some sort of change of state.

All you are doing is letting some stuff die of and letting the released nutrients be processed until the tank and rock are stable.

Scrubbing the rock will remove dead stuff, but it will also remove other life which in many cases is desired.

What exactly are the objectives of curing the rock yourself? In my case it was because I wanted fresh rock with the most possible life on it. This included sponges, foraminaferans, pods etc... If you are looking for the most stuff to survive the curing process, I would also look at feeding phyto and something like golden pearls during the curing process.

Fred

 

[JamesJR]

Just scrub off stuff that is already dead. If in doubt, Sniff.

 

[DrBDC]

Here's something to throw into the confusion. All living organisms in your tank contain phosphates. When these organisms die, that phosphate is released into the water. In high phosphate tanks the rock itself can have phosphates deposited on them to later be released into the water especially after being in a high phosphate tank. See where I'm going with this? If it were a new tank I'd just shake the detrius off of it, put it in the tank I'm setting up and given proper flow, filtration, etc. see what lives. If the cycle takes a little longer then it takes longer. Even when cycles are fast it's always better to wait a couple months anyway before adding other things.

 

[Fredfish]

Confusion indeed! A lot of what is written around phosphate precipitation and leaching is speculation/theorizing. We add far more phosphate to our tanks via feeding than anything else.

One advantage of adding lights during curing is that algaes will grow and take up nutrients released by dying organisms. Harvest the algae regularly and you have good nutrient export.

Note, you will have two distinct die off events. One is all the stuff killed and injured during transport and handling. This will give you your initial nutrient spikes in the water. You could do a few water changes in the first couple of days to help deal with this.

The second is the gradual die of of any organisms that cannot survive (due to lack of food or inapropriate conditions) in their new conditions.

Another thing you may have to deal with is the smell. I cured my rock in a tank in the basement. It was kinda smelly down there for a month or so.

Fred

 

[JamesJR]

I wouldn't put phosphates down as the primary concern during the curing process. I wouldn't worry about that one bit right now because phosphate won't kill fish as it is necessary for virtually every metabolic process. the intracellular concentration added with the tiny cytosol vulume shouldn't be enough to expode it to the high concentrations that would concern me. The die off producing ammonia and nitrite are the main concern because they give off ammonia, which will kill many organisms in the tank. Fredfish put it right on the mark.

 

[Steve Atkins]

If the rock is very fresh you might not want to just stick it in a bin/drum to cure as there might be viable corals on it. I have three now decent sized corals (Goniastrea, Leptastrea & Porites) that arrived in my tank as fingernail sized specimens on live rock, so careful checking of the rock and finding these was quite a bonus and would not have occured if I had just biffed the rock into a drum for a few weeks.

Steve

 

[JamesJR]

I have heard of people using a gradual light introduction during the curing process to insure that the live photosynthetic organisms are not killed off. they kept the rock in a rubbermaid bin like people use for their sumps and start with like 2-3 hours of light a day and then gradually bring it up to full strength. Any thoughts?

 

[Frankysreef]

I used FRESH rock right off the plane from LA when I started my tank and the animals that were still alive off of it were amazing...

Use a bucket of aged saltwater to scrub the dead stuff off, algae .. sponges....

Pick off the crabs and give em away or throw them away... ( crabs are bad!!!! ) pistol shrimps... kinda give or take here.. but mine killed probly fifty snails before I dug him out...

Worms are good.. keep all worms.

Put the rock in the tank and let it come back to life. Keep lights running... and test for ammonia...

Change water... if anything is dead on the rock take it out and scrub it off....

In a couple of weeks as long as ammonia tests 0, you are ready to set it up for fish and corals.

I have also had corals grow off of the rock that I got off the plane... cool species too...

good luck, my avatar is only a section of my tank...

Fiji rock had the best life, marshall island rock had the most pests....and mud.