(for an article) Curing Live Rock

[Seawitch]

Does anyone have any photos of their live rock before they started curing it?

Any before and after photos? If so, tell me how much time had elapsed.

And if you have any advice for beginners, please share.

THANK YOU

 

[jsker]

Lets see

 

[garbled]

When I have cured LR, I have used a few different methods:

1) Put it in a big bucket with a pump and heater for a month or two, let it do it's cycle, pull from the bucket, add to the tank.
When you do this method, you end up killing off alot of what is on the rock, however, you end up with rocks that are very biologically active with bacteria, and can support quite a bit of bio-load. This is good for a stable tank.

2) Do the bucket thing for a week or two, then add to a tank. This is a mixture of the above and below methods, and gives you kinda half and half as far as results.

3) Add directly to tank.
If your rock has been sitting on a tarmac for 10 days, I don't really recommend this. You need to give it the sniff test, and check it for life that you want to preserve. If there isn't a ton of life on the rock, it likely isn't worth trying this. But basically, add it straight to the tank, maybe with some LR from method 1 already in there. This will cause a massive ammonia spike, which you need to deal with right away by adding bacteria, doing water changes, running chaeto/skimmer, etc. Ideally you have the system volume to handle this.

The benefit of the 3rd method, is that potentially, alot of life survives, and you end up with some really cool hitchikers. The downside is, some really bad hitchhikers also survive... You will also have a much longer ugly phase on the tank. But sometimes you really win on the life preservation part.

 

[SFKINNC]

I started my tank with dry rock that (since it originally came from the ocean) had to be cured before it could be used. I placed it in a Rubbermaid bin in my backyard along with some rocks from the Atlantic that I had been using for flowerpot decorations and some dead coral skeletons from a fish tank that I stopped using back in the 80s. I rinsed everything with a garden hose and filled the bin with fresh, clean water. Every few days I sniffed the water and if it didn’t smell clean I rinsed the rocks and changed the water. This went on out of doors from the end of September until after Thanksgiving here in Fayetteville, NC where the temperatures are mild. By late November the smell had settled down and after a final rinse, I built my reef on top of a plastic “egg-crate” light diffuser that I had placed on the bottom of my tank. I added “live” sand from Petsmart and, after adding saltwater, I used a commercial bacteria starter to kick start the nitrogen cycle. I also added some fish food to help the bacteria along. After waiting a few days and checking water parameters, I added a couple of small fish. Sorry I don’t have any photos of the process.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

3) Add directly to tank.
If your rock has been sitting on a tarmac for 10 days, I don't really recommend this. You need to give it the sniff test, and check it for life that you want to preserve. If there isn't a ton of life on the rock, it likely isn't worth trying this. But basically, add it straight to the tank, maybe with some LR from method 1 already in there. This will cause a massive ammonia spike, which you need to deal with right away by adding bacteria, doing water changes, running chaeto/skimmer, etc. Ideally you have the system volume to handle this.

The benefit of the 3rd method, is that potentially, alot of life survives, and you end up with some really cool hitchikers. The downside is, some really bad hitchhikers also survive... You will also have a much longer ugly phase on the tank. But sometimes you really win on the life preservation part.

For new tanks, this is what I do. Light rinse of rock to get some of the mud off, and in it goes. I’m good with whatever comes in...I’ll deal with it eventually.

Do you really think the ‘ugly phase’ is longer? I usually get it in, let the algal succession happen until it looks like the bryopsis Serengeti, harvest it out by hand, and add the CUC and let them go to work.

I feel like that typically by a month and a half, the tank is cruising. The key, maybe, is that I don’t do anything to control the algae in the 1st month or so. Just let it roll through the stages.

 

[Tom Giddens]

Do you leave the lights out during cycle? It seems like there would be less of chance of algae bloom?

 

[garbled]

I start with them off for the first few days, then transition to on low. The problem is, when everything that can't make it dies, you dump a ton of nutrients into the tank, and organics, and lord knows what else. This does cause a massive algal bloom, which is actually good. You want the bloom, because it uptakes the nutrients. Like @Gregg @ ADP said, if you let the stages happen, they each generally die off and the next one cleans out the next nutrient problem. You need each stage to complete, because the stage removes something.

This is generally where people go wrong with this method. They see a bunch of horrible algae, and start dumping chemicals in to fix it, and then everything goes to heck. Never "fix" the cycle with chemicals. (bacteria is not a chemical, that's ok)

Let the algae grow. You will get alot of hair algae, and other things. Generally the only stuff I will siphon out is cyano or slime algae. Eventually it will stabilize to the point where you can add CUC.

If you bucket cycle rock to completion, and then add to the tank, I generally find that the algae blooms are smaller, and less gruesome, and probably a bit shorter, but the rock is less awesome.

People find some truly amazing hitchikers on live rock when you use the "chuck it all in" method. I've seen posts with corals, sponges, tunicates, and even *fish*. Also crabs, and shirmp, which.. maybe you don't want?

I truly feel the difference between a super stable system, and one that has all kinds of problems, is the amount of live sponges in the rock. That's why I use the "chuck it in" method.

I will note, that I do not use florida rock. This is just my personal insanity, but I don't like alot of the hitchikers that come from florida, but seeing how fiji rock is becoming impossible to get these days, I should probably get over it.

 

[Oliver d]

When I will start my next tank will simply go to the beach collect the live rock and the water I need come home and fill my tank end of discussion.

 

[Tom Giddens]

I start with them off for the first few days, then transition to on low. The problem is, when everything that can't make it dies, you dump a ton of nutrients into the tank, and organics, and lord knows what else. This does cause a massive algal bloom, which is actually good. You want the bloom, because it uptakes the nutrients. Like @Gregg @ ADP said, if you let the stages happen, they each generally die off and the next one cleans out the next nutrient problem. You need each stage to complete, because the stage removes something.

This is generally where people go wrong with this method. They see a bunch of horrible algae, and start dumping chemicals in to fix it, and then everything goes to heck. Never "fix" the cycle with chemicals. (bacteria is not a chemical, that's ok)

Let the algae grow. You will get alot of hair algae, and other things. Generally the only stuff I will siphon out is cyano or slime algae. Eventually it will stabilize to the point where you can add CUC.

If you bucket cycle rock to completion, and then add to the tank, I generally find that the algae blooms are smaller, and less gruesome, and probably a bit shorter, but the rock is less awesome.

People find some truly amazing hitchikers on live rock when you use the "chuck it all in" method. I've seen posts with corals, sponges, tunicates, and even *fish*. Also crabs, and shirmp, which.. maybe you don't want?

I truly feel the difference between a super stable system, and one that has all kinds of problems, is the amount of live sponges in the rock. That's why I use the "chuck it in" method.

I will note, that I do not use florida rock. This is just my personal insanity, but I don't like alot of the hitchikers that come from florida, but seeing how fiji rock is becoming impossible to get these days, I should probably get over it.

If I use the chuck it in method,do I do water changes or let the skimmer and filter run and let it run its course?

 

[redfishbluefish]

Seawitch, first off, pre and post cured rock shouldn't really look much different. The rock I recently cured, what I thought was "organic" and expecting bleach to turn white......didn't! Must be inorganics. FYI, about 50 gallons of water with two gallons of plain bleach.

Sitting in stock tank with bleach

Rock after bleaching, drying out

Advice: BRS TV did a video on curing, using acid and bleach. (Melev's reef also did a nice video on, I believe, something he called "cooking rock.") If need be, I'm sure I could quickly find links for the above two videos. I will flat out say that I don't recommend the acid part in the BRS video....and I'm a chemist. It is very dangerous...hydrochloric acid (muratic acid) will burn clothing and skin. Second, the phoshate that is "released" with quickly find another site on the remaining rock to re-bind, unless something like lanthanum is used. I've said it multiple times, the only thing acid does is give you less rock! Go with bleach alone and then let time in saltwater finish ridding the rock of decaying organics.

 

[garbled]

If I use the chuck it in method,do I do water changes or let the skimmer and filter run and let it run its course?

It's helpful to do water changes here, as it helps preserve the life on the rock. I'd recommend an ammonia alert badge, and a few nitrate tests as you go. Ideally the skimmer and chaeto would take care of it all, but you should keep some water in your back pocket just in case it gets away from you a little bit. (like something big dies in some crevice)