Duh moment... keeping live rock alive question

NinnJinn · Apr 6, 2019

For the last week I have been having a duh moment....

I know I should know this but for some reason my mind keeps bringing up a blank.

I no longer have trochus snails in my tank due to an emerald crab.

I will be ordering some trochus snails for my established 125 gallon DT.
My plan is to use a 29-gallon QT tank for the trochus snails for 76 days and keeping them fed by taking pieces of rock out of my DT.

The question I have that I should know the answer to is:

While in quarantine how do I keep the live rock alive with just trochus snails in the tank?

KrisReef · Apr 6, 2019

The live rock doesn’t Need anything except to stay wet.

PatW · Apr 7, 2019

If you use copper in your quarantine tank adding the rock will be an issue. You will have to thoroughly clean everything to remove the copper.

Mark Novack · Apr 7, 2019

After taking down my SPS, the rock went onto the patio, was washed down with a garden hose on hard stream (Oh my the grime that washed off), sat in the sun for five weeks, went into an 80 gallon container and sat with water movement and filtration for a year. I changed the water once because of the smell several days after placing into the sea water storage. Upon setting up my new tank, the rock was covered with sponge, tunicates, and in a week copopods were were filling the water column with molted carapace.

Live rock is incredibly difficult to kill. Even better, completely inert and dead will spontaneously erupt with nitrogen cycling bacteria if just placed into a tank within weeks. I strongly advise against using any "starter" addatives unless it's a bit of established sand or piece of rock. We want the correct, naturally occuring bacteria on the substrate and rock, not in the water column using up nutrients that feed the attached bacteria.

Mark Novack

Doctorgori · Apr 7, 2019

My plan is to use a 29-gallon QT tank for the trochus snails for 76 days and keeping them fed by taking pieces of rock out of my DT.

what are you gonna do with the rock afterwards? put it back in the tank? might be a lot of bother....
..... on the off chance you could try ulva ...turbos eat it, not sure with trochus, easy enough to get and grow tho.... also might not be "that" hard (or long) to grow algae in the QT tank...maybe change the bulbs closer to 5000K ish add a lil weak F/2 (or sumthin low toxic,,,maybe even a lil ammonia) ... best pre-fertilize the tank but a lil probably won't hurt the snails