Rock cooking, it does work.

Whaledrive....
IM002903.JPG


you see all that stuff on the bottom of my "cooking" tank?

that is what was comming out of the rock after almost 5 weeks of "cooking"
there is no feeding going on in there, that is all from the rocks....
The whole point of this is to get that crap out of the rocks....
dead "base" rock has this junk deep inside of it too.....
If you notice most everyone who is "cooking" there rock have many forms of export.. Large skimmers, fuge, macro.... but that dosen't stop things from setteling on the rocks...
We are doin our best to remove P from the water... This way happens to work rather well.... dead rock had P plastic rock has P live rock has P I would rather have live rock....
Cooking by no means kills everthing of in the live rock.... I have noticed MORE critters after cooking.....
I have no idea why anyone would attack this method.... no one is makeing you do it.... It works... I know this because I have done it...
 
I thought it killed off my bryopsis problem. But two months after the rock went back in the tank...boom! There it blooms again!
 
Intersting Reefmaniac1, How long have you had your live rock?
IYO what do you think is the cause? Do you have a sandbed?
Any other of the normal algea causing things going on in your reef?
I am not trying to attack your methods in anyway just trying to learn more myself :)
 
I've had some of the rock for over a year (in my old 20g before I moved into the 90). The rest I've had for about 8 months. I started to develop the bryopsis issue back late summer/early fall.

Not entirely sure what the problem is now (I used to have nitrate issues...got a better skimmer and an RO/DI unit of my own). However, I DO use Oceanic...which will be changing. I have a moderately deep sand bed, ~2 inches.

I don't have any other algae issues than the bryopsis. Granted, it's not growing anywhere near as fast as it was before the skimmer change and RO/DI but "cooking" apparently didn't kill it off.
 
Some of the results

Some of the results

I've been following this thread for about 9 weeks now.
Some of my rock just came out of the tubs this past weekend. I'm happy to have (some) my rock back. Polyp extention has been phenominal since I took the rock out. That leads me to beleive that the rock was a detritus trap. The bryopsis was driving me nuts. I was almost at the point SeanT was. If I had not found this thread I would have ripped out my DSB as the next step in trying to find out where the algal fuel was coming from.
Anyway heres some pics.
Well start with the before pictures where bryopsis would smother my corals if not pulled out daily! :mad2:
Photo was taken August 10, 2004

beforecooking.jpg


I started cooking my rock on January 4th
This photo was taken yesterday.



aftercooking.jpg
 
Very nice. :thumbsup:

Aren't the results uplifting in the regards you can physically tackle such a horrible problem?
 
SeanT said:
Very nice. :thumbsup:

Aren't the results uplifting in the regards you can physically tackle such a horrible problem?
Click to expand...

Thanks Sean. I'm very pleased with the results so far. Most of my sps was encrusted on the rock so I lost a lot of stuff & fragged what I could. Like you, for me buying new rock was not an option. I simply don't have the time. I'm working 70+ hours per week. So when I come home I want to enjoy my tank & not pull algae.
Now onto tackling my pryamid snail problem!
 
I had been battling a red turf algae that spread across the LR like veins.I tried everything,stopped feeding,wetter skimming,agressive waterchanges,different herbivores(urchin did eat it),etc..
After 6 wks of cooking the red algae had dissapeared,at 8 wks there was still some Valonia and a bit of Byropsis left so i picked that off and continued the process for another month until my rock was clean.
I would never put any rock into a reef tank again without undergoing this procedure.
3788140BB.JPG
 
Last edited:
Here's a quick question: Will cooking my rock help kill off my flatworms?
Thinking of cooking, along with removing my SB and setting up a PVC rack for the LR after cooking.
 
TJcop said:
Here's a quick question: Will cooking my rock help kill off my flatworms?
Thinking of cooking, along with removing my SB and setting up a PVC rack for the LR after cooking.
Click to expand...

Hard to say. It will depend on what they feed on.
 
From what I know (which is very little), they are very much dependent on light. So I guess cooking would wipe them out....hopefully?
 
I had a crazy amount of brown hair algae, it was nasty. I don't have corals, just rock. I just did weekly water changes, used nitrate and phos. removing chemicals and took all of my rock out of my tank and scrubed it under warm water --- it was gone in a month. This method probably wouldn't work for those with larger tanks or with corals though.
 
Silver_Stang,
The problem with your method is that it will kill a lot of the beneficial life on the rock.
Bacteria, 'pods. sponges to name a few.
hth,
Sean
 
Yeah, it probably did kill a lot of benefical bacteria on my rock. But, the rock I got from my lfs is so crappy their are no cool things like sponges, etc. ---- lol

oh well, you live and learn
 
FINSHED!!!!!! Rock is back in the tank!!!!! Looks great too....
I cooked for ? 14-15 weeks... FINALLY stuff stopped spewing out...
New tank look is BB with 2 large piles of rock, sitting on eggcrate supported up off the bottom with 2" plastic cloths hanger... gives about 1/4-1/2" of clearance from the bottom... Also installed my 2x 6100 streams.. Will plumb the ampmaster 3k closed loop this week and hook everything up to my basement sump when it is done filling with RO/DI.. this will add 190g to the system, and will be skimmed by an ASM G6!!! I as soooooo happy.... I will post some pics tomarrow...
 
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