I used some rock for a quarantine tank and I had to dose chloroquine phosphate, which saved my yellow tang and blue throat trigger, but now the rock is tainted. Can I bleach and acid wash the rock to neutralize the rock to be reused? Thanks, Bill
Reuse rock after chloroquine phosphate?
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Manthanol
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Hi Ocelaris, CP is sensitive to light and heat. Also, it is degraded by bacterial action. I would run some activated carbon to remove the CP from the water column, leave the light on and let the QT run for some time and the rock should be free of CP. Adding some bacteria to the QT should speed up the process. Hope this is helpful and good luck.
rkpetersen
walked the sand with the crustaceans
There's a bit more to it.
The active ingredient in chloroquine phosphate is chloroquine.
But when you dose it, you also put a huge amount of phosphate in the water.
The phosphate will definitely adsorb to rocks and sand. Carbon, light, etc won't remove it.
If you just change the water without doing something with the rocks/sand, phosphate will then leach back into the water.
Do this over a few CP quarantine cycles, and you can accidentally reach extremely high phosphate levels.
Even high enough to harm fish; I've seen it myself and at first had no idea what was going on.
If you don't want to remove the rock/sand, you can add a sizable amount of GFO to the tank's filter to pull the phosphate out, between quarantines.
The active ingredient in chloroquine phosphate is chloroquine.
But when you dose it, you also put a huge amount of phosphate in the water.
The phosphate will definitely adsorb to rocks and sand. Carbon, light, etc won't remove it.
If you just change the water without doing something with the rocks/sand, phosphate will then leach back into the water.
Do this over a few CP quarantine cycles, and you can accidentally reach extremely high phosphate levels.
Even high enough to harm fish; I've seen it myself and at first had no idea what was going on.
If you don't want to remove the rock/sand, you can add a sizable amount of GFO to the tank's filter to pull the phosphate out, between quarantines.
OP
OP
Ocelaris
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I just used it for one quarantine tank in an emergency. It wasn't supposed to be a quarantine tank. I was doing chelated copper and my yellow tang and blue throat were basically dead. So I put them in a tank that was running with rock and sand. The yellow tang was literally stuck to the power head in the other tank. But both made a miraculous recovery and are doing great 9 months later. I bleached and acid washed the rock with muriatic acid, so hopefully burned off any bound calcium phosphates, but I'm not worried about the phosphates as it may go into a frag tank with good filtration. Thanks!
