Lyngbya and Live Rock ?

j.falk · Aug 25, 2019

I've been fighting Lyngbya for the better part of 6 months now. It came in with a piece of live rock and took over everything.

So I've decided that I'm going to break my tank down and completely restart from scratch to get rid of this problem once and for all.

My question is, how do I clean my rock so that I can reuse it? Can I soak it in bleach for awhile to kill everything off of the rock and then soak it in clean water? Or should I use peroxide instead since it's known to kill Lyngbya? Will soaking the rock guarantee that it will be Lyngbya free or would it be better to purchase all new rock and start from scratch?

jda · Aug 25, 2019

I would not dry out the rock. Put it in dark containers with lids for a few months with water circulating and stuff. Swish the rocks a few times a week and transfer them to new containers with fresh water (water change) every so often. This process is called "cooking" rock, but it has nothing to do with an oven or heat. You can google this if you use this term.

I would not want to kill of the bacteria on the rocks. If you can manually remove most of it, an army of urchins will clean up the rest... I don't mean like 2 or 3, rather 20 or 30.