LR Cure time post acid wash

[Utahsaltnoob]

Hello this is my fist post!

I’ve tried searching for this very specific item with no luck. But I bought a rock I couldn’t pass up from my local fish store. To ensure there are no hitchhikers I muriatic acid washed it and then gave it a bleach soak followed by several rinses and dechlorination cycles.
Now it is sitting in a tank of clean salt water with a heater and power head and it’s been 2 weeks and I have been testing waters and getting zero readings of nitrites. How long is it supposed to take to see a spike in the water?

The reason I am being so cautious is I want to add this rock to my existing tank, the rock weights about 12lbs and the tank is 120 gallons with a 30 gallon sump with around 110lbs of LR in there already.

Thank you!

 

[PatW]

It depends on how fast the appropriate bacteria colonize the tank and how fast they multiply. It could take a couple of months. If you want to hurry things along, you can get a culture of cycling bacteria from the LFS. I have used several and they all seem to work. Some are faster than others. Dr. Tim’s enjoys a good reputation.

 

[btmedic04]

Let me ask this, did you add a source of ammonia? ie, some fish food, plain table shrimp, ammonium chloride, etc?

 

[Ron Reefman]

Why do you feel the need to wait until it's live before you add it to your tank?

IMHO you have gone way above and beyond what you needed to do to make sure this rock had no life on it. And you've done more than enough to make sure that the acid and bleach have been neutralized or washed away. It's soaked in a saltwater bath for 2 weeks. So now this rock is dead and clean. If I were you, rather than trying to make it live in a separate tank, I'd add it to the DT now and it will come alive quite quickly with all the proper bacteria that are already in the tank.

Adding an inert dead rock to an existing tank with live rock and other livestock (fish, corals, whatever) is perfectly OK. It won't do any harm. Just go for it!

 

[Utahsaltnoob]

Why do you feel the need to wait until it's live before you add it to your tank?

IMHO you have gone way above and beyond what you needed to do to make sure this rock had no life on it. And you've done more than enough to make sure that the acid and bleach have been neutralized or washed away. It's soaked in a saltwater bath for 2 weeks. So now this rock is dead and clean. If I were you, rather than trying to make it live in a separate tank, I'd add it to the DT now and it will come alive quite quickly with all the proper bacteria that are already in the tank.

Adding an inert dead rock to an existing tank with live rock and other livestock (fish, corals, whatever) is perfectly OK. It won't do any harm. Just go for it!

Awesome thank you guys for all the advice. I will test the ammonia levels and if it is zero I think I’ll agree with Ron and says it’s pretty clean and ready for my tank to come back to life!

Thanks again. Looking forward to learning more as I go.