Acid wash rock, what is the complete process? PLEASE HELP.

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nly04

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I am shutting down my 150gal tank to restart. I have a bunch of rock that I want to Muriatic Acid wash before reuse. After restart this will be SPS mainly tank so I want to do it right this time. I am confusing about the process. I think I will do these steps below and please correct me if I wrong:

1/ Remove rock out of the current tank and let it sit for 24hrs or couple days.
2/ Use hose or low pressure wash to remove aptiasia, algae and dirts..
3/ Put those rock in container and mix Muriatic acid with water (RO or none RO water?) in 1:10 ratio, then let it sit for 24 hrs.
4/ Remove rock out of Muriatic Acid then immediate rinse them. Again RO or none RO water?
5/ Do I need to let rock dry up after rinse? If yes, how long?
6/ Do I need to soak rock in bleach or baking soda to neutralize PH after Muriatic Acid wash? If yes, what are the step? Again RO or none RO water?
7/ Do I need to soak them in RO water for couple weeks before let them dry out or put rock into salt water for cure? before put into tank.

I have time and I am not rushing this time. Please advice. Thx
 
Nutramar Foods
First off, you can wash the rock with a hose and brush to remove the obvious stuff.

Second. Dump the rock into a tub of water with a cup of bleach for over night. The bleach should remove the organics. After that hose the rock off again. If it is nice and white and clean, you have gotten rid of the organics.

If not, there is no harm in repeating the bleach process.

Muriatic Acid is also known as Hydrochloric Acid or HCl. When you acid wash live or dry rock, it reacts with the rock which is calcium carbonate. 2 HCl + Ca2CO3 to H2O + CO2 + CaCl2. Part of the rock is destroyed. This process should remove most of the phosphates from the rock. It also seems to make the rock more porous.

So I do a wild guess at how much rock I want to remove. I add that much acid to the water usually a cup. I generally use a 5% or weaker solution of acid. The reaction is pretty brisk and is over in minutes. You can hose off the rocks and admire the result.

A cup of acid will remove, I guess, about 1 lb of rock. So if you have say 20 lbs of rock, you probably do not want use 2 quarts of acid because it would consume about 40% of your rock.

If your tank runs low levels of phosphates, you probably do not need an acid wash.

You can get the same result by dumping the rock into a tub of saltwater with a powerhead for a couple weeks. This is called “curing” the rock. Then measure phosphates with the Hanna ULR test. If you get 0, you are good to go. If you have phosphates, you can remove them with lanthemum chloride or just do a complete water change and wait another 2 weeks an test again.
 
Do I need to use any RO water along the process or just tap water?
[QUOTE="PatW, .[/QUOTE]
 
Tap water for bleach and acid wash. Dunk in RODI before cycling.

Saltwater curing is done in RODI saltwater.
 
Tidal Gardens
@PatW provided sound advise. Only other thing I'd suggest if you haven't done so already is to do a quick search for BRSTV What's the most effective rock curing method? It will complement what Pat said above about acid removing some of your rock. I only raise this because you paid money for the rock and depending on the amount of acid you deploy plus the amount of time in the bath / mix will determine how much rock is actually lost. I haven't watched that video for a while but I seem to recall anywhere from 11 to 23% of the rock being removed. To me that is a lot.

For that reason I went with the bleach bath and then followed up with lanthanum chloride soaking. I have 150 lbs of dry pukani that I ran this through last year. More or less pressure wash, spread out in bins, add water, cup of bleach, power head, and sit over night. Drain and repeat mix, repeat again. Once that was done after a week I followed that up with 4 days of lanthanum chloride in similar format of soak, drain, refill, soak, etc. Still didn't cure all of the phosphates (pukani rock is horrible in this regard) but it did come out clean without losing much if any rock like I would have with using the acid.
 
Take rock wash off with hose, use tap and muriatic acid.
Soak in tap after for 24 hours.
Repeat same process with bleach and tap, but this time soak in bleach 24 hours.
Remove rock, rinse with hose really well, alliw 24 hours to sun dry.
Soak in RODI 24 hours.
Rinse again with RODI, then good for use.
Seems tedious, but this will be pretty full proof. Have done this twice. In some cases, as mentioned, rock becomes more porous, this can be a good thing for bacteria homing.
My 2 cents :)
 
Get appropriate sized containers for the acid bath unless you want the reaction w the muriatic acid to overflow all over. Not a fan so I did 2 batches to avoid an overflow. Also, ALWAYS water first in the container then add the acid. Wear eye protection and chemical resistant gloves as well. An accidental splash on the skin or in the eyes is something to be avoided.
 
The fumes can literally burn your lungs. Do this outside. Like he said above always WATER first. Then add the acid.
 
Nobody really mentioned how long you would leave the rock in the acid mix. I’m currently experimenting with this in a 5 gal bucket with a few rocks in it. After a half hour I dumped the mixture into a different bucket to inspect the rock and it still has plenty of organics on it. I also believe my mix may be a lot strong then stated above as I put about 3 gal of water in and approx a quart of acid! It did overflow but I did this on my driveway and washed it away with the hose!
 
i did the 10-1 acid bath on about a 100 lbs of rock. put them in brute pail, added measured amount of hose water to cover the rock then add acid. waited untill it stopped bubbling, dumped the water ,rinced a few times then let it soak. i didnt weigh the rock but i didnt notice a differance in how much rock came out. im sure i lost some. then soaked in 10-1 bleech bath, rinced and went into storage. do it outside and wear goggles and rubber gloves. fumes are bad.
 
Orphek OR3 reef aquarium LED bar
Acid washing is essentially HCl + CaCO3 = CO2 + H20 + CaCl2. Yeah the equation is not balanced. The acid actually eats away a layer of your rock. The idea is that removing a layer gets rid of most of the nasty stuff in the rock. The nasty stuff is mainly on the top most layers of the rock. It seems reasonable but I don’t know if it has been proven. I have done it and on heavily encrusted rock it seems to be beneficial. It also seems to make the rock more porous. But you pay money for rock so it should be done with some restraint. Why destroy the rock you paid money for anyway?

When I did it, I covered the rock with tap water. I added dilute acid, I think it was 5% but it could have been 10%. There was intense fizzing. That was the acid reacting with the rock and the outgassing of CO2. It stopped after a couple of minutes. I then rinsed the rock several times and immersed it in RODI. Then I let it dry and it was ready to go.
 
today's muriatic acid is weak ...(by law) ...I just use a gallon of splashless bleach / 32 gal brute trash can...soak all the rock for 24 hrs...then hit it with a power washer at modest pressure..Then I put all the rock in the sun for a day...then back in the brute with ro/di or distilled ..then its filtered by an eheim 2217 filled with Poly Filters (as many of the 12x12 heavy duty sheets as possible) ..I let that run for 3-4 months- (covered)...You would not believe the crud that shows up on them poly filters when the process is done...I'm not talking dirt - it's organics that have leached from the rock over the period of soaking ... phosphate issues are none for me after this process...HTH.
 
Here we have muriatic acid wich is 20% and this stuff is very strong, if mixed 10:1 with water, in few hours will totaly dissolve the rock, of course, depending on rock itself, but 24 hours leaves you without rock.

So be carefull, dont let it stay for too long in acid...
 
ReefBot Lab, Automated Water Tester
www.bulkreefsupply.com

How to cure live rock with acid for a saltwater aquarium - Reef FAQs

Acid curing is the most aggressive method of curing rock. It is also the least safe among the accepted methods of how to cure live rock for a reef tank or saltwater aquarium. There are very few instances in which we consider acid curing a necessity over a bleach or natural live rock cure. We will
www.bulkreefsupply.com www.bulkreefsupply.com
 
Baking soda is unecessary step, rinse with plenty of water and thats it....
 
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