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Curing live rock


Sherilyn91
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How do I cure live rock? I bought 2 big pcs from lfs with coralline alage.. I soak in hot water for an hour den gonna sun dried it..

After drying the red coralline will turn white?

the rock having a bad smell now..

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but to cure live rock, isn't the rock just cycled with salt water such that the die-offs are complete?

You seem to be describing the process of drying out/ bleaching rocks. By doing so, the rock will be dead already. i.e. dead bacteria and other organisms

After drying the coralline will be white but this certainly isn't 'curing'.

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Curing and killing live rocks is two different method . What you are doin is killing the live rocks with hot water .. When they are dead for sure they will rot and smell bad..

Curing live rocks is putting them above water lvl while having salt water spraying on them for a period of time , this way the unwanted pest like crabs , mantis shrimp and worms will crawl out and drop to the bottom leaving the bacteria and other good stuff alive on the rocks it's self..

Stairway to Heaven

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Any formula to bleach rocks? I read the process require a week of soaking and followed by flushing with water then drying?

Any masters to share the formula?

Thanks.

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There is no secret formula, basicly you soak your rock in Salt water with either a power head or air stone to keep it alive while waiting for the bad stuff inside the rocks to die off and leech off whatever it has in it.

Change water after a week or so and test to see if it is still leeching any p04 or nitrate into the water. Some reefer cycling the rock together with their new tank.

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2 hours ago, he said:

There is no secret formula, basicly you soak your rock in Salt water with either a power head or air stone to keep it alive while waiting for the bad stuff inside the rocks to die off and leech off whatever it has in it.

Change water after a week or so and test to see if it is still leeching any p04 or nitrate into the water. Some reefer cycling the rock together with their new tank.

Sent from Singapore Reef Club mobile app

This method is for 'curing' live rock -> i.e. keeping  live rocks alive & let the organisms that may have damaged/die during transportation to die off completely. A process that takes 3-5 weeks. As he mentioned - can be part of the tank cycling process.

 

On 5/22/2016 at 9:21 AM, fatphotoboy said:

Any formula to bleach rocks? I read the process require a week of soaking and followed by flushing with water then drying?

Any masters to share the formula?

Thanks.

If you intend to 'kill' the rock, a typical method is to soak it in 50% bleach / 50% water solution for a couple of days. 

Then keep rinsing/soaking (a few days)  multiple times with tap water + anti chlorine till you don't get any more bleach smell. You can also just get a chlorine test kit to verify (about S$12)

An optional step is to do a vinegar soak. Hearsay it gets rid of phosphate. And it really gets rid of the bleach. 100% vinegar (eg. $3.50/liter from Seng Shiong). About 30min vinegar soak will suffice. Then rinse a couple of times with water (IMO, tap water will do) to get rid of the vinegar.

Then let it dry completely.

 

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, SubzeroLT said:

This method is for 'curing' live rock -> i.e. keeping  live rocks alive & let the organisms that may have damaged/die during transportation to die off completely. A process that takes 3-5 weeks. As he mentioned - can be part of the tank cycling process.

 

If you intend to 'kill' the rock, a typical method is to soak it in 50% bleach / 50% water solution for a couple of days. 

Then keep rinsing/soaking (a few days)  multiple times with tap water + anti chlorine till you don't get any more bleach smell. You can also just get a chlorine test kit to verify (about S$12)

An optional step is to do a vinegar soak. Hearsay it gets rid of phosphate. And it really gets rid of the bleach. 100% vinegar (eg. $3.50/liter from Seng Shiong). About 30min vinegar soak will suffice. Then rinse a couple of times with water (IMO, tap water will do) to get rid of the vinegar.

Then let it dry completely.

Thanks for the great input! I have started to do bleaching yesterday.

Hearsay that the vinegar will induce more algae? 

Cant wait to have the rocks ready for scaping and commence my project!

Thanks again all. For the good tips!

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50-50 bleach-water is excessive.  Usual recommendation is 20 parts water to 1 part bleach, or 10 parts water to 1 part bleach if you're kiasu.  Soak for 24 hours is enough, 48 hours if you're kiasu.  Thereafter, you can soak the rocks in water with antichlorine to get rid of as much bleach as possible.  Dry the rocks completely to be 100% sure that you are free from bleach (bleach evaporates completely without residue).  A small amount of remnant bleach on the rocks is not a bad thing as it actually raises your ORP until depleted.

Vinegar will burn the surface off your rocks as acid reacts with calcium carbonate.  Just use pure artificial white vinegar (5% acetic acid) undiluted to do this.  Please note that this is a very dirty process as the entire surface of the rock is burnt off by the vinegar.  There will be fizzing and popping while the reaction takes place, and the resultant residue is brown and smelly and damn disgusting.  How it helps to reduce phosphate is that phosphate can bind with calcium carbonate and then leech into your water, causing phosphate problems.  By burning the surface of the rock off, you are also burning the bound phosphate together with it.  How effective it is depends on how much phosphate was bound in your rock.  For example, I made the mistake of buying recycled live rock that was in another tank for goodness knows how long.  Even after 1 round of vinegar treatment, the rocks are still leeching measurable amounts of phosphate (though much less than before).  I would probably have to do a 2nd round of vinegar bath to totally get rid of the phosphate.  However, as this rock is extremely porous and "holey" in structure, excessive vinegar bath would cause the rocks to potentially disintegrate or break into small pieces if too much of the surface is burnt off by the vinegar.

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