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Muriatic Acid Bath

That should be fine but check PH. You could always use Baking Soda to help neutralize it.
 
yeah the soaking is to basically dilute the acid that is still left. Basically any hole and nook that there's enough surface tension in the acid to hang on you'll get muratic acid still, diluting it (soaking) with water just reduces that.
 
the acid will also "neutralize" on the rock by reacting with the carbonate. Once the pH is above...say3-4, feel free to use a powerhead to accelerate the process.
 
I would never soak rock in bleach. Too hard to remove residue from the pores (imo). Acid will neutralize. Peroxide will react with light and surfaces.
 
JAR said:
Is this a preferred method to soaking the rock in bleach?
Do some of the goodies in the rock survive the acid?

Yes IMO for #1 and no to #2 (depending on strength of acid and duration of soaking)
 
When I was a kid my father used to take the dead ornamental coral out of the tank every so often to clean it.
He would just soak it in a bleach solution, let it dry out for a few days, then put it back in with the fish.
If I recall we had most of the fish for many years.
I like the acid bath method.
I have a few rocks covered with some green palys I need to deal with.
 
I would use a dechlor if doing the bleach method. I'd soak it in freshwater afterwords as well.
 
JAR said:
When I was a kid my father used to take the dead ornamental coral out of the tank every so often to clean it.
He would just soak it in a bleach solution, let it dry out for a few days, then put it back in with the fish.
If I recall we had most of the fish for many years.
+1 but my dad had me on dechlor duty ahh good old days
 
Good ol' days? I still do it on a few tanks, on site. Bucket of hot water with 1/3 cup of bleach, soak corals for 20 minutes or so, rinse corals in hot water, place corals in a bucket of hot water with a bunch of Prime for around 20 minutes, remove corals and rinse, place in tank. Been doing that since forever, thanks Modern Aquariums! /shameless plug for a company that's 2,665 miles away/
 
Coral reefer said:
Yep. Good ole days. You are just old and nearing the point of becoming obsolete...I HATE bleaching fake (dead) corals


It pays the bills man, plus I have to maintain a certain amount of OG status, some people are too chicken to bleach on site, does that ring a bell there chappy?
 
I used to do the take out the coral and bleach it for the clean asthetic look too back in the day in my FO tank.

I did it with all of the rock in my current tank btw.

Bleach for 24 hrs (would guestimate I used a 10/1 maybe 15/1 mix)
Soak in FW for 24 hrs
Dry in sun for 24 hrs
Soak in FW with dechlor for 24 hours
Dry in the sun for 24hrs or until chlorine smell is gone
 
Dechlor didn't due it's job if you got a chlorine smell after using it.
 
Cloram-X is better then PRIME for an action like this. Don;t get me wrong, PRIME has it's place in my cabinet.
 
I use Pond Prime ;), the best stuff I've found, it's WAYYY more concentrated than the regular prime and smells much worse so you know it has to work.
 
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