How do I properly clean live rock

[FishyFishy!]

I just did this with my rock. Worked wonders! What sized bins do you have?

Here is what I did. I made two 40 gallon garbage bins into my rock holders. I put a drain in the bottom so that I could quickly and safely drain after each cycle.

Soaked rocks in a bleach bath for 24 hours. I used 2 gallons of bleach in each bin, and the live rock was 3/4 of the bin. Not sure what the ratio would have been.

Drained bleach mix. Pressure washed all the rock. Put back in the bins and filled with water and poured a medium sized bottle of prime into the buckets for dechlorination. Let soak for 24 hours.

Then came the acid bath. I used a total of 2 gallons of muriatic acid. Remember....NEVER add water to acid. Always add acid to water!!!

So I filled the bins with water, and poured 1/2 gallon of acid into each bin....extremely carefully. The reaction was instant. I waited until the major foaming stopped, and added the second jug to the bins. I then let the mixture sit for about 4-5 hours.

Then I added a crap load of baking soda to neutralize the acid. I let that sit for about 20 minutes. Then I drained the bins, and powerwashed all the rock again.

I then filled the bins with RO water, and let the rocks soak for another 24 hours. After that I removed the rock and placed it all on a tarp, and let it sun dry for a week.

After this process, I was left with really nice clean, white rock. Worked well for me.

Please remember to wear gloves, eye protection and a resperator when you're doing the acid. I wore a regular paint respirator and at one point could still feel burning in my lungs. Its nasty stuff and needs to be handled extremely carefully.

Best of luck!

[FishyFishy!]

Bleach soak



Acid bath





Finished product

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by FishyFishy!

I just did this with my rock.

I'm curious what the rock does 3 months after the tank is setup? I used dead rock, against what I normally advocate, and regret my decision. I didn't do the bleach/acid thing, but cooked it for a while.
Curious if this purifying actually does any better?

[FishyFishy!]

I have yet to use it. Its actually going into my tank tomorrow, so time will tell. The way I see it, its similar to using the bulk reef saver rock. I set up a tank with the fiji reef rock and seeded it with a couple nice pieces of coraline covered live rock from another tank. After the diatoms and the hair algae, I just put a massive cleaning crew in, and it came out awesome. Im hoping this will be relatively the same. We'll see I guess lol

[FishyFishy!]

And I will also add, that the only reason I did this, was that a lot of my fuge rubble had a byropsis issue. And some of the larger pieces of rock had pests when I got them. I didnt have much of a choice unless I wanted to try and battle pests in my tank.

I have had great success using live rock from the store, but at $8.00/lb a large tank filled with nice store bought rock wasnt in the budget this time around.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by FishyFishy!

I have had great success using live rock from the store, but at $8.00/lb a large tank filled with nice store bought rock wasnt in the budget this time around.

Ya, but over 50 pounds gets cheaper, and for me, I can get better pricing so not a huge issue. I would only need 50 pounds, so within budget, since now I'm doing 50g water changes every 10 days.

I used this rock simply for the shapes, it's all hand picked rock from Indo (guy went over and picked the pieces brought up to the beach) and some really nice shapes.
But, for the look of it now, and the algae smothering frags, I'm questioning whether I did the right thing

[Reef Pilot]

What am I missing here?? If you buy live rock, why would you then kill it with acid or bleach? Save your bucks and buy dead rock (marco rock or equivalent) and do the acid with that if you must.

When I first got into this hobby 4 years ago, I had to deal with old tank syndrome live rock (inherited a 10 year running tank) with both high nitrates and high phosphates. It took a while but eventually got it down to zero nitrates and phosphates. Knowing what I know now, that time would be drastically reduced if I had to do it again.

Also added marco rock and only rinsed and soaked it for a few weeks (with many water changes) before adding to my display tanks. I did get a phosphate spike again, but got that under control pretty quick. I have used Foz Down also, and it really works well to get a serious phosphate problem under control. But as others have said, you need to be careful with your doses. Then I just maintained with GFO.

The key also is having the right P04 test kit. Your color test kits are not accurate enough and can lull you into thinking you have low or no phosphates. You need the Hanna digital checker for that.

[FishyFishy!]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

What am I missing here??

Im not sure what the OP's reasons are, but I did mine because of bad pests. Namely byropsis.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by FishyFishy!

After the diatoms and the hair algae, I just put a massive cleaning crew in

That's where I'm at now. My rock isn't bad, but I'm comparing it to my last build when I used fresh rock. I didn't have any of these issues and nutrients were never measurable. Currently sitting too high on NO3 and PO4 for my liking, and not convinced it's going to get better any time soon.

I figure if things aren't under control by end of month 3, I'm replacing the rock with fresh stuff.