Cooking and Curing Rock....

[mikellini]

Originally Posted by hfp75

Well I did some reading and the order doesn't seem to matter... there are opinions both ways but I found nothing concrete to make me do it either way. I had the acid, so I did that first.

The reason you would want to bleach first is to get rid of the organics. Acid will kill and dissolve some organics (along with a layer of rock), but not all. A strong bleach concentration will actually dissolve organics first, making the acid wash more effective at removing the top layer of rock containing bound phosphates and perhaps metals.

Personally, I didn't want to mess with potentially harmful chemicals, so I just picked off all of the organics I could see, and did a few soak in RODI/dry in the sun cycles to clean the rock and leach phosphates/metals without losing any rock mass or using harsh chemicals. A bit more work and longer process, but to each their own.