Dry rock curing time?

[Sleepydoc]

I have some rock that was previously covered in algae that I'm curing. I started with a bleach soak for several days and am now curing it in heated salt water. I started the curing process back on December 20th and saw an NH4 bump to 2ppm on Jan 13 that dropped down to 0 by Jan 30. The problem is my Nitrites and nitrates are still off the charts. NO2 has been hovering at 2 and NO3 >100 with no changes since Jan 30. By 2 months shouldn't they start dropping a bit? Or am I just too impatient?

I realize that I'm just waiting for the denitrifying bacteria population to grow, but I would have expected to see some signs by now.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Just do water changes.
Maybe rinse the rock again too.

 

[Potatohead]

Denitrifying bacteria takes much longer, six plus months. I agree with doing water changes since the water is probably full of organic funk anyway.

 

[Idoc]

Once the bacteria convert the nitrite to nitrate, the nitrate has no where to go except just keep adding up in the water. The bacteria to convert the nitrate to nitrogen gas are usually anaerobic unlike your other nitrifying bacteria that are aerobic. So chances are slim that you will have those anaerobic conditions deep inside the rock in such a short time. Just like @saltyfilmfolks said... to get rid of the nitrates, you need to do water changes.

 

[Sleepydoc]

Thanks for the replies - I was blanking on the fact that the bacteria that covert nitrate to N2 were anaerobic.

I have done a couple of water changes, but didn't see any change at all, so either the nitrate levels were really high, or there's just a lot of schmutz in the water and they are shooting up again before I test. I was debating in the back of my mind whether doing water changes would reduce the food supplies and slow the proliferation of the bacteria, but thinking about it, food supply is not the limiting issue here.

The tank into which I'll be putting the rock is already up and running with minimal livestock and some live rock already in place, so my main goal is to make sure all the organics have decomposed and aren't going to dump into the tank, overloading the bacteria that are already there. I'll keep doing the water changes and make sure the rock truly is cleaned off and try to be patient.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I’d honesty scrub them. And use a full fresh water change. Wait a day or two and test again.

 

[Sleepydoc]

I had scrubbed the rocks after the bleach soak, but I went ahead and took them all out, rinsed them and scrubbed them again. I did notice one of the rocks that must have been above the water line, as it still had some green algae on the surface. Maybe that was contributing to all the nitrites. Either way, I did a complete water change and got rid of any schmutz at the bottom of the tub, so we'll see how things look in a week.