Whole Rock Dip??

[dahenley]

Well, i have a 240gal tank, and its been up and running for 1.5-2 years.

I have a few nice pieces of coral attached to the rocks, and frags everywhere. The other day, i noticed a Monti Eating Nudi on one of my frags. I also saw just one on a colony. (because my monti colonies are larger then dinner plates... there is no telling how many you dont see is what im getting at.)

Because of this, and because i have wanted to re-aqua scape my tank, i was wondering if its ok to pull my rock with corals and just dip all of it? (i am going to use a Rubbermaid trough so i have plenty of room)
are there any negative effects of this? Would the iodine hurt the rock?

opinions are welcome.
PS, im planning on doing this tomorrow so quick responses are even more welcome!

 

[Urchinhead]

Any inverts like pods on the rock will most likely die off due to iodine shock. However you are facing a longer term issue in that the Nudi's lay eggs. You may want to just treat the entire tank.

Also when you move the rocks you will get allot of detritus kicked up in the water column so you will need to stay on top of your parameters as there will most likely be some sort of spike associated with the removal and kickup.

 

[dahenley]

i will keep my eyes out for eggs....... and everyone knows how that will go.

i am only going to do 1/2-1/3 of the tanks rock. (most of my monti's are on that side of the tank. i have a Frag tank that i will turn into a QT for a while...

how would you treat the whole tank? (its a 240gal tank with 300gal total. 96x24x24)

after i re-stack my rocks, i will let it rest and after a few weeks, do the remainer of the tank.

i plan on keeping my skimmer going, as well as installing a filter sock to catch anything that gets kicked up.

 

[Urchinhead]

Here is a good article on the subject by Eric Borneman. The summary is:

50mg/l of Potassium Permanganate for 90 minutes gives a 100% kill ratio but is very stressful on the corals. It can be found from chemistry, pool and water treatment purification sources.

Sounds from the article that you will want to do a dip of this with a QT tank setup to monitor the monti's.

Article from Reefkeeping:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-09/eb/index.php