Adding Dry Rock to an established system

[CoralManz]

The deal is that I have a piece of live rock with coral encrusted on it but it's also plagued with algae and aiptasia.So what I think ill do is take it out try to frag the encrusters. And replace it with a piece of dry rock.How should I go about doing this?Should I cycle the rock in a separate holding tank or go right ahead and put it in?

 

[CoralManz]

#reefsquad @Bulk Reef Supply @MarineDepot @SaltwaterAq

 

[john.m.cole3]

You can just swap it out or treat the aiptasia and algae out of the tank. Superglue the aiptasia, then manually remove as much algae is possible, then spray the areas where the algae was with regular ol brown bottle peroxide, let that sit for 5 minutes, then rinse rock off with clean SW.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

You can just swap it out or treat the aiptasia and algae out of the tank. Superglue the aiptasia, then manually remove as much algae is possible, then spray the areas where the algae was with regular ol brown bottle peroxide, let that sit for 5 minutes, then rinse rock off with clean SW.

yea, that. Id rather have live rock in the tank than a larger piece of dry.

 

[randyBRS]

If I was in that situation and removing the rock was an absolute must, I would fully cure a like-sized rock and replace it. I've always understood that adding a large piece of dry rock may cause a spike in ammonia and (if it were ocean harvested) could also spike phosphates/nitrates because of the left over organics that would break down. These spikes can fuel algae growth even further and put me back to square one.

That said, both the algae and the aiptasia are controllable nuisances and I personally would attempt to control them before having to try and remove corals and replace the rock. Chances are that this single rock isn't the only one in my tank that is afflicted and adding a new rock exposes it to the same exact issues down the road.

Hope my opinion helps a little.

-Randy