Reef nutrition

Concern about live rock

Flagg37

Flagg37

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I was given about 200lbs of live rock from a guy that had recently broken down his tank. He had it in trash cans filled with saltwater being circulated with power heads in his garage? I'm a little concerned about using it the way it is because if hitchhiker and any other forms of contamination. Do I really have anything to be truly conserned about? Since the water wasn't heated I would think most of the hitchhikers would have died off in the cold but I'm not sure. I've never bought actual live rock before. I've only used Real Reef rock. Do I need to clean it or anything before using it?
 
No way to know. Could be plenty of stuff you don't want that can survive cold. Aiptasia, majanos, wowed crabs. Probably not worth it. If say dry it out/ acid bath it and start fresh.
 
+1 for drying out/cleaning the rock. The potential benefits or live rock in terms of positive hitch hikers and bacterial life are largely outweighed by the risks in my experience (unless you know and trust the tank they came from).

If you already have a cycled tank, it won't take too long to re-populate the bacterial and algal populations with positive things from your tank. If you're starting a new tank, it's always easier to cycle a tank with known good inputs than try to hunt down hitch hikers and address them down the road.

When we setup our first nano tank years ago, we bought live rock from Petco (boo! hiss! I hide my shame). It was basically a giant sponge for pests (huge bristle worms, aptaisia) and nutrients from horrific tank management. As much fun as it was to count each new hitch hiker we discovered, it was a strong lesson on what nasty live rock can do and how difficult rock that leaches phosphate can be to nutrient export.
 
+1 on cleaning.
Also, after cleaning, soak with PhosphateRx, GFO, or some other phosphate remover.
Residual phosphate on rocks can be a real hassle.

If you want real hitchhikers, there are places that sell small reef-direct rocks as "seed".
 
No more convincing needed. I'll be drying them out.

So the process would be what? Dry them then clean off organic material with a brush or something, then soak them in phosphateRX, then into tank?
 
You'll have to 'cook' the rocks. Put them in a barrel, fill with sw, power head and whatever kind of media you want to run (to remove phosphates) and let it run. Top off as needed. No light no heat. Basically you want the organic a to die off and decompose, the you remove phosphate through media, nitrates through 100% water change.


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Me:
I have pretty clean tap water, so most curing is done with that.
I spray them like crazy with a hose.
Then I put them in a big tub of tap water, add Muriatic acid until it bubbles a bit.
Then spray again like crazy.
The acid dissolves some organics, plus opens up pores in rocks a bit.
(Be careful around acid obviously)
After that, a few weeks soaking in tap water, dumping every week.
A final week or so is done using salt water from water change from my tank, with PhosphateRx.

Not perfect, but easy and cheap.
 
Muriatic acid is a great choice for cleaning the rocks. If you don't have that, a liberal hydrogen peroxide bath and some scrub brush work will go a long way at removing nuisance algae and organics (but won't free up bound nutrients as well).
 
I didn't know anything about muriatic acid when I started, so I used bleach to dissolve the organics on my rock, accompanied by a heater and a powerhead to speed up the breakdown process. Followed by a bottle of Prime to get rid of the bleach. Then cured using heater/powerhead/ artificial bacteria to make the rock live again.

There were a couple dead gorilla crabs in those big holes in the rock. Took them out.
 
Nothing works better or faster to remove phosphate from old rock than hydrochloric acid (archaic name: muriatic acid). It dissolves the entire outer layer of the rock, removing bound phosphates, algae, and pretty much everything else. However, you'll need to take some safety precautions and buy some baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, not baking powder) to neutralize the acid after you use it before you dump it out. The downside to this is that the rock will be totally dead. You will have to go through a total cycle with it. In my opinion, you might be better off just letting the rock sit in trash cans without heaters but with water circulation for a month in the dark. Measure the water for phosphate levels. If the levels are high, you can use lanthanum chloride to start stripping it off the rock. Just keep doing that until the phosphate is gone. This will probably preserve the bacteria and maybe even some coralline algae bits, allowing you to start your tank much more quickly. Just my 2 cents.
 
+1 to using regular tap water.

I used regular tap water and used lanthanum chloride (ie pool phosphate remover). Tested phosphates every other week until it wouldn't drop below ~.12-.14 after two or three months.

I didn't use muriatic acid, and I think I should have done that in the first place. Mines were BRS dry rock so I didn't worry.

edit: i also did 100% water changes in between testing.
 
I just use bleach. Didn't really think of much bleach the rocks for a week. Took it out power washed it with a pressure washer. Then let them disk in tapbwater for two weeks changing water in between.
 
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