I am in the process of getting everything to set up a new and my first saltwater tank. I have decided to drill the tank and make a sump. I already purchased a few pieces of dry pukani (spelling?) Rock. I was testing my tank for leaks and just dipped the pukani in the tank to rinse the dust off of it. Now that I am not setting up the tank right away the rock has a weird smell to it. Now I am looking at curing the rock. Can I let it soak in a bucket in the basement with distilled water? I have seen to let soak with saltwater and a heater and bubbler going but didn't know if I can do distilled water as the saltwater is not available today or tomorrow for me and i want to get this started. I will let it soak for a few weeks probably and then fill the tank up and start the tank cycling. I didn't know if the distilled was an ok way to go or not as I was getting mixed answers when I Googled it. TIA!
Dry Rock
- Thread starter tina.damos
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Tobias9413
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Personally I’m doing mine in bleach first to completely kill everything even though my rock is dry. 3 days bleach 4 days prime bath then cycle for 3 months until in ready to set it up
The answer is yes. You need to rinse the rock really well. Any kind of water will do. Remove as much dead stuff as you can, (the smell). The sooner you add salt to the water the better. Even Petco sells reef salt. Mix it to about 1.020. You want bacteria that will grow in salt water. If you use fresh or distilled the whole time the bacteria will die when you add the rock to the salt water.
PatW
2500 Club Member
To get the dead organic matter off, you can let it sit in fresh water with some bleach added..... like half a cup per gallon. I just add it until I get a pretty strong, sharp bleach odor. Let sit for several days. Remove and rinse thoroughly until bleach odor is gone, the bleach trick should pretty near eliminate the odor problem.
Dry Rock can leach out phosphates. You can stick it into saltwater with a power head and let it cure for about a month. But you can skip this step.
Next you cycle the rock.
Dry Rock can leach out phosphates. You can stick it into saltwater with a power head and let it cure for about a month. But you can skip this step.
Next you cycle the rock.
