<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10649266#post10649266 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Insane Reefer
Cayars, ok - that sounds more in line with my thoughts. I think the confusion for a lot of us came when you said you could go from cast to tank in one day. From my perspective, that sounds a bit magical, esp with what I've learned about cement in my search for a quicker rock.
Thanks for giving a time-frame, I think that will help a lot in expectations.
Oh got ya. In MY SYSTEM I can because of the water volume. Adding say 100-250lbs of high pH rock doesn't throw my system off at all because the neptune controller sees the higher pH and shuts down the kalk drip and other carbonate drips and calcium reactors if needed and brings them back on line as the pH declines. Sorry about the confusion.
I typically always keep the rock for 21 days before it would go to a store for sale because I don't know what size system it is going to go into. I just get "use" from it (Kalk drip replacement) before hand and "seed" it with bacteria from my system.
I vary things a little but right now what I'm doing is taking the rock from the cast the next day, soaking it in warm water (water left out in the sun) for a 1/2 day to a day to release the salt (I use a little in the mix plus sometimes for interesting crevices) and then sit out on the blacktop (used to be a basketball court before I took it over) with plastic sheets over it. Unless it rains I'll spray a fine mist over it daily and flip the rocks over in a couple of days. Sometimes I'll re-dip the rock if big to soak it again and then put it back under the plastic.
At about day 7 or 8 I'll move it to a freshwater bath for a day and then into my outdoor 300g tubs (connected to my inside system) which of course are salt water at 35% salinity. Being outside they get direct sunlight (uncovered with no UV protection). I'll normally get a profuse diatom outbreak on them and the tub which is good. I don't clean out the "brown stuff" but do have a decent size skimmer running outside on these tanks (also a few inside).
This hasn't affected any of my inside tanks. The diatoms "brown" up the rock nicely (I flip the rocks every couple of days) and within about 2 weeks start to get nice green coralline algae growing on the rock. When I get to the point of getting enough brown and green on the rocks I'll move them inside to my stock tanks under PCs which bring out the pink and purple coralline algae. The shift in lights gets me nice looking rock pretty quickly. Oh, probably worth mentioning I mix a little coloring in the mix (usually Terra Cotta sp?) to be off white leaning towards a pinkish tint. The combined colors of the rock come out very nice within a months time. Pink and purple coralline algae grows like crazy in my tanks and I'm constantly (every day) scraping this off the glass which releases the spores into the water column.
Of course I sometimes sell the rock right from the 300g tub when it's pH safe. The longer I hold it and color it up the more I sell it for. Some stores want cheap rock (say $2/lb) and other want nicely colored rock much better looking then Fiji for ($4/lb). Some want middle ground rock that's nice a brown with some green and just a tad bid of pink/purple on it for $3/lb. So I try and keep a "balance of stores" buying wholesale from me so I can keep my more limited inside operation full while still pushing more rock via the larger outside tubs.
I'm not sure what the winter months are going to do to me but I'll probably move some tubs into the garage and get another 2 months of production that way. I've been looking into solar tubes but I'm not sure it's worth it. Time will tell.
You can view the pH of my system as a whole (inside reef tanks, prop tanks, ray tanks, trigger tanks as well as the outside 300G) looking at my personal website located at
SaltyLiveStock.com. The pH is always above 8.3 and usually in the 8.4 to 8.5 range where I like to keep it. There's some limited pics of my system on there but most are a few months old. I'm going to have a bunch of pics online next week of each system and my new equipment setup which drawfs the pics on there now.
Carlo
