dowtish
New member
Crazy how much junk is on dry rock when there's nothing living on it!
There is about 15lbs of older dry rock in there to seed it. So that may be where some of it is coming from.
Try and get as much phosphate out of those rocks as possible. I know it will cost some $$$ but if you can put a reactor in there stuffed with GFO, and measure the PO4 level every few days.
When my wife visited her relative in the states I got her to bring back Marco rocks to the UK. I treated the stuff with Muriatic Acid to clean the PO4 off the rock.
You wouldnt believe the disgusting foam that was produced. Goes for all dead/mined rocks to be honest. The rock was pretty clean of PO4 afterwards.
I am running it in the tub for this very reason. I have been running GFO in there as well. I did however get the dry marco rock from a friend that had it leftover when he scaped his new setup. He has been running his tank now for almost a year and has had no algae or phosphate issues at all and he doesnt even have a CUC in the tank. So obviously it was a good batch of clean rock considering.