can stored liverock destroy an established tank?

[KING]

Ok i moved states a year or so ago into a way smaller place and i had big tanks and gave away/sold most of my stuff but kept a tote of cool flats and unique pieces of rock. About 6 weeks ago i bought a 30g that was nice and the guy was on point with, he was also moving 1000mi away. Had some basics in it, parameters were great, rock coralined up, nice set up. I ran it for a few weeks just keeping an eye on it and had planned to up to 40b so i set up a 15 out of this tank for the livestock and moved everything into a 40, i had that rock stored with soaked papertowels all over it and took it out and scrubbed it with hot water and used some of it. My gf has a kinda new 20 that she took a couple small pieces to use and now all her fish are dead and im down from about 40 to 5. Ich spread like wildfire (never had ich in 10yrs in the hobby) and more and more of all the little fish just dropped dead daily. Only other thing we did the same was started feeding San Fran Bay frozen cube food, bought in two different states and added garlic to the mix. Im down 100s of dollars in fish not to mention a broken heart bc im an animal lover. I had to run copper in my 40 to try and save the last few, then gonna move them to 15 with UV and run UV on 40 as i get it back to normal. Any info, experiences, ect???

 

[AZRipp]

I'm wondering if the "Live Rock" had a significant amount of die off which would kick your tank back into cycle mode. This would mean there was a bunch of ammonia which could definitely kill fish.

 

[BadFish619]

I put rock in my tank that I stored for 8 years. Its been fine

 

[AZRipp]

I put rock in my tank that I stored for 8 years. Its been fine

Yours was truly dead though, right? I mean dried out and dead. The OP said he kept what he is referring to under wet paper towels.

 

[Peace River]

I am truly sorry to hear about your loss of fish. Were you able to do any water tests before and after you move the rock?

 

[KING]

Water never got above .25 ammo or 20 nitrate, rock was still a little damp, sealed in tote for like a year. scrubbed in hot water pre-tank. All 3 tanks already had other rock. Its the only common denominator i can come up with. The rock was fine in the reef for YEARS before taking it out and storing in tote wrapped in tank water soaked paper towels. was still slightly dang, **** i cleaned it pretty good, never heard of rock killing stuff, never thought anything of it. Now 3 tanks are destroyed.

 

[tupes]

Since you say you had a detected amount of ammonia you kicked your tank into a cycle. That's where your tank went south.

An established tank will not show ANY ammonia.

 

[road_runner]

Agree with most here. I think you are dealing with nutrient breakdown and po4 leaching from your old rocks.
Ick comes when fish stressed which is another indication your system might have traces of ammonia, po4 and no3 spikes and possibly other parameters out of proper range.
What should help:
Weekly water changes.
Good husbandry.
Maintain stable parameters by weekly testing major parameters.
If you see detectable ammonia I would add strain bacteria like dr. Tim's bacteria to kick start the cycle.
If you detect high po4 make sure you use gfo or rowpho.
Make sure you use high quality carbon in your system regardless so you help clear the water column from anything that the rocks might be dumping.

 

[tupes]

Also using tap water to scrub the rocks might have had chlorine in it . You have a few things in what you wrote that can cause problems.

Just because fish dont show signs of ick doesn't mean it's not present in the tank.

You should soak rock in RODI water changing out water every few days. A powerhead in the tub helps move the water around to keep it from just settling in the rock but not necessary.

 

[KING]

My gf used 2 TINY pieces, i used a good bit. I never thought of causing any issue but everything was good before, we did immediately start doing water changes every few days and checking perams daily but they never looked THAT bad, ive seen ammo be like 2 and nitrates 60 and fish be "ok" (not in my tanks btw)

 

[KING]

Well the rock is already in the tanks now and basically all the fish are dead, should we basically just plan on a recycle now?

 

[KING]

And thank you guys for the advice!!

 

[AZRipp]

Honestly, I can't imagine that rock, sealed wet in a tote for a year, wouldn't be toxic. Live rock can endure periods without flow and aeration for a few days to maybe a week or two (still with die off at this point), but for a year I highly doubt it would be good. It would be better to let it die. When you're ready to use it again, bleach it, sun bake it, and start from scratch.

 

[road_runner]

Honestly, I can't imagine that rock, sealed wet in a tote for a year, wouldn't be toxic. Live rock can endure periods without flow and aeration for a few days to maybe a week or two (still with die off at this point), but for a year I highly doubt it would be good. It would be better to let it die. When you're ready to use it again, bleach it, sun bake it, and start from scratch.

Actually I think that's exactly why it's bad rocks at this point.for live rocks to be live rocks it need to sustain bacteria that proccess ammonia nitrite and nitrate...having a rock in dark place with water all this time will produce rotten rocks not live rocks.
You need proper condition to keep a live rock "live"

 

[KING]

Never got notification on last posts. Thanks for info. Been dosing 40g with copper and not seeing ich now and what fish are left seem ok, eating great, swimming around everywhere, look good. Before the copper i had done a 4g water change every other day for like 2 weeks so im thinking at this point the contaminants that got in the tank may be mostly gone now. everything is looking good. I plan to closely watch everyone as i finish up copper run, then start the 4g eod changes until copper is out, then back to filtration and addition of UV for anything still trying to hang out in there. Def not adding anything until im 100% sure im ready. Took rock out of 15g and put back with other left over stored rock with plans to bleach, scrub, RO soak, and sun dry it and throw away old tote and put in a new one DRY for future use. If anyone has anything else to add im all ears. Wish me luck

 

[KING]

What bleach % solution, rinse with RO? Sun dry then store or use?