Rock cooking, it does work.

john the hermit said:
To be fair I don't know how much "life" you guys in the States get on your rock when new, but over here you're lucky to get much more than algae with most of it. Which goes to negate my reasons for not really needing to cook new rock,
John
Click to expand...

But John, the algae is there for a reason. That's all the more reason to "cook" that rock.
 
Hey Bomber, I'm not qualified to argue this point with you, so I'm not going to try,but, I tend to follow the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" philosophy and for a long time my tank worked really well. Then (to my shame) I got distracted for a while and it all went wrong, so I knew I had to fix it. "Cooking" was one of the fixes I applied after reading about it on this forum, and I'm glad I did it. My rock is now as porous as a sponge, just like it seemed to be when I first got it, When you lift a piece, clean water pours out ,not mud.
However if I had not failed in the care of my tank, and ifit had carried on looking good , I may not have carried out the "cooking". You notice thats a big "if"
Maybe when my LR has recovered I'll become an advocate of the "cook it all club" but I do take your point about the algae's there for a reason.
John

ps; I'm coming to the Keys in june for my holiday, perhaps you can recomend some interesting things to look at, and places to see in relation to reefkeeping
 
My wife and I will be staying in Key West, but we'll have a car and I may try to hire a Harley (I have a Superglide here) I would like to check out as much of the Keys as poss in the two weeks we're there, and do some fishing (though I don't catch much).
John
 
I have been bb for about 2mo. and cooked rooks for about 8 weeks, It had cyano, hair ect.. I,m very happy with the results and the tank has never looked better. My question is that some of the Halmeda is regrowing(I had pulled it off when cooking) Is this a sign there is still phosphate in the rock? what does Halmeda thrive on and how can it be controlled.
Thanks, Mark
 
I think if I knew what I knew now I would have bought Rock from Hirocks. I would have used a few pieces of liverock to seed it. I would have saved a lot of money.

In the end all you want is beautiful corals and the rock is just a base to adhere the corals to.

It's strange that in the beginning I was after the rock with the most life. I didn't realize the beneficial life could come with such negative organisms.
 
Bomber said:
It's Bom-B-er ;)

You've just got to love when people that have never done something, tell you how it's going to come out.

I course I 'cook' all my rock. You guys have no idea how much phosphate is in rock - live, dead, no life, or full of life.
Here's the result of "cooking" rock. All of these grew out of my rock after I cooked it. Why? because the rock didn't poison it.



2004-09-02-20008c_std.jpg


2004-09-02-20013_std.jpg
Click to expand...

Hmm. I'm not sure I buy that. If someone put me in the spotlight to explain it, I'd say they came in from NSW. They may have been allowed to settle and grow because the rock was clean, but it'd take a "show me" to make me believe that that Agaricia survived rock cooking.
 
260 lbs of LR swished, dunked, and swashed... 6" of sand... no match for a 4hp shop vac!!!! Only took me like 5 hours... nothing too bad.. I have my rock in my 180g basement sump (not hooked up to display) with my new asm G6.. this should be a fun way to test the new skimmer... corals are on racks.. can't find anywere to dump the swash buckets... someone smeeled my dumping it down the drain and I had to stop.... they smelled it for 150 feet away!!! I took lots of pics and will post them soon... I need a beer....
 
Atoller said:
Hmm. I'm not sure I buy that. If someone put me in the spotlight to explain it, I'd say they came in from NSW. They may have been allowed to settle and grow because the rock was clean, but it'd take a "show me" to make me believe that that Agaricia survived rock cooking.
Click to expand...

I UV the water duffus! LOL They were on the rock from the get go.

(PS to anyone reading this. We are best friends and allowed to call each other names. :) )
 
Bomber and other bb experts,
I went bb about 3 months ago and i'm very pleased with the results. I have a question about Helmeda. Before I cooked the rocks(about8 weeks) I pulled off as much as i could, It is now coming back. Is this a sign of phosphates? Any conrol? There is no other algea and the tank looks very clean.
Thanks,Mark
 
Bomber said:
It's Bom-B-er ;)

You've just got to love when people that have never done something, tell you how it's going to come out.

I course I 'cook' all my rock. You guys have no idea how much phosphate is in rock - live, dead, no life, or full of life.
Here's the result of "cooking" rock. All of these grew out of my rock after I cooked it. Why? because the rock didn't poison it.
Click to expand...

I'm floored if that's true.

upset.gif
 
i'm thinking of going bb,but a have a few question...do i use carbon,any tipe of refugium,and the main question my live rock don't have any tipe of alge(bad)only coralline and corals all over,and even if i want to,i could not do it cause every single rock have a coral growing,can i still go bb??
 
OMG, I nearly lost the will to live there !! I read the whole thing thinking " Someone is bound to tell me what all this means in a minute" but I'm none the wiser. Very interesting points have been raised, but until I know HOW you " cook" your rocks, I dunno if I agree or not on whether to do it !!

Can you enlighten me? What is the method ?
 
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