About to cure my rock

[mcarroll]

I guess my follow up question would be, have you ever tried your method with untreated dry Pukani rock?

No, but I'd like to. (Looking to see if anyone has.)

$ and ∞ limits, mostly. I have one tank and it's been up since live rock was desirable...for better or worse. Any other tanks I've started or assisted with in the interim have used live rock.

 

[mcarroll]

Some folks have mentioned "non-destructive" (my term) use of LC so the rock can be maturing to some degree while you're going down this road. That's definitely less-bad for maturity.

 

[mcarroll]

I got through 6 pages of the-same and the server must have bombed or something...can't reload the page or anything now.

Error 524Ray ID: xxxxxxxxxxxx • 2018-04-03 05:05:00 UTC
A timeout occurred

It honestly didn't look like anyone was considering or using methods like I described though....

Maybe RC will work again later.

 

[Water Dog]

If you're telling me that your "sludge rock" looked visibly clean before you put it in, I could need to see pictures. ;Photogenic Maybe the rock was scuzzier than you remember!

That was after a very thorough rinse with the garden hose and high pressure nozzle. After that, I placed 40# in a 20 gallon tall tank in the basement... really bad call on my part. Brown funk, horrible stank and sludge 24 hours later. Went to Home Depot and got a 20 gallon Brute the next day. For about 2 months, I soaked it in RODI and used LC to get the phosphates down, the last treatment and the phosphates read .06 according to my Hanna Phosphorous ULR checker. This was in the late fall of last year. Rock has been dry since. To me, the rock was cured... so I thought.

This past Sunday, I wanted to finally cycle the rock in my Brute and get a good bacteria population growing as I’m finally making headway on building my stand. After 24 hours in saltwater and a bit of Microbacter 7, I decided to see what the phosphates were. They were at 91 with the Hanna Phosphorous ULR... .279 phosphates! Put about a cup of high capacity GFO in a reactor and today I’m reading 72 (.221).

My whole point, and I apologize to the OP for hijacking his thread, is that Pukani is a different beast then other dry rock and should be treated as such. Proper precautions should be taken when dealing with it.

 

[Water Dog]

They do server maintenance every night and the site goes down between 1 -1:15 AM EST.

 

[mcarroll]

My whole point, and I apologize to the OP for hijacking his thread, is that Pukani is a different beast then other dry rock and should be treated as such. Proper precautions should be taken when dealing with it.

From what I got through of that thread, Pukani they are talking about is live rock that was dried out for shipping and sale. So the same precautions as with "live" live rock should probably apply.

Other dry rock seems to be mined – never live or even in seawater in anyone's lifetime. I'm guessing but that kind has potentially been leeched out over geologic time and could be really clean.

 

[Davy Jones]

As most of the rock is reef cleaners and fiji dry, I will likely not put any of that in bleach and just start with the natural cure on that. The one ~7lb piece of pukani i will bleach.

I am only bringing fish and coral from my current tank, between bryopsis, dinos and calurpa over the last 2 years im not bringing over any of the rock what so ever. And yes i understand that bringing my corals will likely transmit some of this to the new tank, but im hoping that with enough prep of the display with various bacterias and live rock seed pieces and proper cycle i can atleast limit the outbreak if any. I will be scrubbing all the plugs and bases (that i can not remove outright) with h2o2 and a tooth brush prior to going in the display. May even do an iodine dip and bayer dip as well. I dont think i have any pests to be worried about other than the algae mentioned above.

This tank will also have a large ATS once the cycle is complete so that should out compete any algae in the display i would think