vodka and cooking rock

[salty joe]

I read on a thread somwhere that adding a carbon source will speed the cooking process.

Any truth to that?

 

[elegance coral]

In theory, it should. You would still need a means of removing the phosphate though. Water changes, skimming, mechanical filtration, phosphate media, or a combination of methods.

 

[salty joe]

I'm just changing water. The rock is soaking in fresh RO/DI water-no salt. I check the P daily with my $40 Hanna meter, & when it stops going up, I change the water. It's in a 32 gal Brute & with the rock there is maybe 20-25 gal water.

Can you suggest a vodka dosage? Also, would vodka go in daily or just one time with each water change?

 

[reefEng10]

If you're cooking with no salt you are going to kill most if not all of the beneficial bacteria in the LR. Normally cooking done at normal sg and normal temp.

 

[Stuart60611]

Cooking the rock along with adding a carbon source will definitely speed up the process. I had a very bad algae bloom about 1 year or so ago where my rock was completely covered with hair algae. I kept the tank fishless with the lights out for several weeks while dosing vodka and live bacteria. After this period my rock was completely clean and the die off from all the algae was broken down. I suspect that the process would have taken much longer had I not been dosing carbon and live bacteria.

 

[trentdingo]

I have done this before. as stated above, you will need to keep the rock in the same sg as your tank... It is much more effective if you can add a skimmer.

 

[salty joe]

This rock had been stewing in water with P that had to be off the chart. The first soak in salt watweer showed P at 176. ouch. So I considered an acid bath to drive the P out, but want to try freshwater first. After the next week in freshwater my handy little Hanna meter showed P at 66. still ouch. I'm starting the third week-after one day P showed 13 but on day two it was 30. BTW, on the first day I repeated the test and got 13 again, which suggests good precision plus the accuracy at the low end is pretty tight from my understanding. I really like this little $40 meter.

So I'm way beyond worrying about bacteria on the rock. I don't believe the freshwater sterilized it, so a carbon source might help.

It's in a 32 gal Brute & with the rock there is maybe 20-25 gal water.

Can you suggest a vodka dosage? Also, would vodka go in daily or just one time with each water change?

 

[avaneaton2000]

If the rock is in fresh water the rock is not "live" anymore. You are supposed to "cook" the rock in saltwater with a skimmer running while doing water changes.

 

[ghostman]

As stated above, if the rock is in fresh water it is no longer live. It seems that your concern is removing the phosphates from the rock as opposed to keeping the bacteria. Since the rock is already "dead" you could add a little muriatic acid to the water to help in removing the phosphates.