Live rock and mixing salt?

Notsolostfish · Aug 10, 2022

Okay, so i admit it. I didnt do much research im new so forgive me for that. I just filled my marine x60.2 i had caribsea live rocks in there. And im mixing the salt inside the tank for the first time with sand and live rock. The caribsea live rock have been sitting for around a month without water. What did i break here exactly? I know im not supposed to do that when i have live stock. But for intial fill i thought its fine to add salt directly to the tank as ic been watching yourube videos of people doing it. Now im worried. I have wave makers in there so that salt is dissolving throughly.

blaxsun · Aug 10, 2022

The good news is you can still use the rock. The not so great news is that it's no longer "live", but this is easy to remedy with something like BIO-Spira (which you can use to insta-cycle your tank). And yes, you can add the salt to the water and have the pumps (etc.) mix it up for you.

Tired · Aug 10, 2022

Well, you're now starting with dry rock, which is rock that has 0 bacteria or life on it. The month of being without any water probably did the most harm, but freshwater isn't good for marine bacteria.

Biglew11 · Aug 10, 2022

charbel101 said:
Okay, so i admit it. I didnt do much research im new so forgive me for that. I just filled my marine x60.2 i had caribsea live rocks in there. And im mixing the salt inside the tank for the first time with sand and live rock. The caribsea live rock have been sitting for around a month without water. What did i break here exactly? I know im not supposed to do that when i have live stock. But for intial fill i thought its fine to add salt directly to the tank as ic been watching yourube videos of people doing it. Now im worried. I have wave makers in there so that salt is dissolving throughly.

I don't know much of anything about the Caribsea life rock. But It's not true live rock. They claim it has bacterial spores embedded on the surface. I'm not sure if the fresh water would have activated the bacteria then killed it or not. But even if it did it's still usable just add some biospira and or microbacter start.