Dry Pikani bleach than acid bath
 

I have some dry pukani from Eli.

My plan is to soak it in bleach overnight

After soaking it I'll rinse the rock

From there I will toss it in water+ muriatic acid

Followed by a final rinse and dry.

My tank isn't ready for the rock yet so I don't know if I will cycle it in a Rubbermaid container or just wait until the tank is ready to cycle it in there.

Is anyone interested in pics of the bleach/acid part?

Any specific pics you want to see?

I plan on picking 1 or 2 rocks and getting some before/during/after pics.

I also have some tonga shelf pieces in there as well

I did the exact same process with rock from Eli. It turned out beautiful and white. Suggest you add a pump to bleach bath to really mix it all around.

Sounds cool, post a few pics...

Just don't pour the HCl, (muriatic acid), and the bleach out at the same time!!! You'll liberate chlorine gas.

Ive done it on my most recent build. Lots of pics there if you wish to see them. Always remeber to add the acid to water.....NEVER add water to acid. And never mix bleach and acid.

I did water/bleach bath for 24 hours. Then a pressure wash rinse. Followed by a freshwater soak. Then did the acid bath for a few hours, with a bunch of baking soda at the end to neutralize the acid. This was followed again by a pressure wash and long RO water soak. Then I left them out in the sun to bake/dry out for a couple weeks.

I had no phosphate issues at all and best of all...no pests!!

Highly recommend doing this. Be safe and best of luck. Let us know how it turns out.

I have a lot of stuff on the rocks, not idea what any of it is.

I'll grab 1 or 2 rocks that have the most discolouration and take a few shots. See how they look at each stage.

http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/...pslwxrsrm8.jpg

Ok, this is huge. Not too sure how to resize on my phone.

But this is probably the dirtiest rock of the bunch. Some dark brown, some red stuff, etc.

http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/...psuuhf35pd.jpg

After a few hours the rock has lightened up quite a bit

http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/...psobjr7t31.jpg

I rinsed the rocks then did the acid.

I'm not sure how long I was supposed to leave the rocks in there. I probably added the baking soda too early.

A lot of crap came off the rocks, but there is still a good amount of dark brown and a few red spots still

I left them in the acid for about 2-3 hrs, until the bubbles had all stopped and popped. Then added the baking soda and let that sit for another hour just to make sure.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...b2cd650b5d42c3

Once it was all done there were still a few brown areas on the pukani.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8593/...4fcc2ee3_c.jpg

When I did it, I poured acid in, waited until the reaction was over, then poured more in until the reaction stopped. Then I let it sit for a couple hours. Then did baking soda.