Completely nuking my rocks

[Eclyps19]

I'm in the process of a complete tank teardown due to some unknown issue that makes my tank inhospitable to most coral. I have a lot of good rock that I'd like to eventually re-use, but I want to be absolutely sure that I'm killing everything on it before re-using (especially the vermetid snails and any bacteria).

I see a lot of people saying to soak in muriatic acid, or soak in bleach, but I haven't seen any real specifics. What concentration? How long? How do I ensure that my rock doesn't absorb a bunch of nastiness during the process which gets released when I re-add them to a tank?

I have plenty of time to let things soak, dry, soak again, cure, etc. Just trying to make sure that I do it right the first time.

 

[rmorris_14]

Here is some info on the acid

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

It says it's risky and the only way the recommend it is if it is coming from a failed tank. Which seems like fits your scenario. It has the concentration info as well.

Hope it helps.

 

[JonezNReef]

Personally I pressure washed my rocks and then put my rock into a 55 gallon brute trash can (almost filled the can with the amount of rock) and filled it with water til it was almost full (close to 45 gallons of water) and added a cup of bleach for every 5 gallons. I let the rock sock for about 3 days and drained all the water out and then repeated this until the rock was back to a white color (about 2 weeks with the amount of rock I was cleaning and about 5 drain and refill with water and bleach). I then took all the rock out and pressure washed them again and let them dry out for about a month. I then soaked the rock in RO water for a few days and have since used part of the rock on a new setup and had no issues as of yet

 

[MartinM]

For a much more stable tank without lots of issues, I highly recommend using live rock in the future

 

[bud217]

I did the muriatic wash years ago. I think I just followed the brs instructions or some I found online. It dissolves the outside of the rock a bit. I might have left it in to long but I did notice the rocks had sharper edges that I didn't care for.

 

[Hermie]

Man if you really want to nuke it just buy new rocks IMO

 

[Tamberav]

Killing bacteria sounds like the opposite thing to do to make corals happy. Your rock is beautiful and purple. I would have just brought the PO4 up from 0.03 to 0.08-ish.

 

[damsels are not mean]

Killing bacteria sounds like the opposite thing to do to make corals happy. Your rock is beautiful and purple.

There are some coral pathogens that can actually make corals mysteriously difficult. Some of these are kept in check simply by "biodiversity" but in some cases not. I would send a test to aquabiomics to see if it's a known issue or if not another case for their dataset.

 

[Tamberav]

There are some coral pathogens that can actually make corals mysteriously difficult. Some of these are kept in check simply by "biodiversity" but in some cases not. I would send a test to aquabiomics to see if it's a known issue or if not another case for their dataset.

maybe but I doubt that is the issue. I think it is easy to blame though. I am not saying PO4 is 100% it but that would be the first thing I would try. It is right on the edge of acceptable and not acceptable in all tanks.

Plus he has another tank that is thriving. I bet water got cross contaminated at some point from the big tank to the little one... even if it was before he knew the big tank was going to struggle. Sounds like that tank gets neglected (coral QT tank?) and does well. The one that isn't doing well has all the fancy stuff.. sometimes neglect is needed

I suppose you could test it. Just add a rock from the big tank to a smaller one. This will change all variables except the rock.