nasty rock

[Trevor82]

I second the acid. Just did 50lbs and it worked awesome.

[Realshow]

What kind of acid are you talking.g about? I've tried lots lol but never thought I could clean rocks with it :-)

[Trevor82]

Hydrochloric(muriatic) acid. To do the 50lbs it took me 2 gallons of acid and maybe 4lbs of baking soda to neutralize it. I basically did a couple medium sized peices of rock at a time in an old salt bucket. 9 parts water to 1 part acid. I left all my rock in for about 10 hours at a time. Tested the solutions ph and if in acceptable levels dumped it down the drain, if not add baking soda. Total cost was about $30. If you have any questions you can shoot me a pm.

Trevor

[Realshow]

So using the acid will eat off all the rotting matter.
Then follow that up with lots of rinsing.
Does the acid have a residual effect on the rock?
How long should the rock soak for after the acid bath & before entering into the tank?
Do I just start a regular cure on the rock afterwards?
Where is a good place to pick up some of the acid?

[ckmullin]

Originally Posted by Realshow

So using the acid will eat off all the rotting matter.
Then follow that up with lots of rinsing.
Does the acid have a residual effect on the rock?
How long should the rock soak for after the acid bath & before entering into the tank?
Do I just start a regular cure on the rock afterwards?
Where is a good place to pick up some of the acid?

1. after treatment throw it in a bucket of tap water and add some baking soda and let sit for an hour or so (get any small pockets of lowered PH water out of the rock)

2. No residual effect but that it will/can change the structure/look of the rock since your throwing a lump of calcium carbonate into acid.

3. I've soaked for different time periods from an hour to overnight. 2-4 hours is good...but depends on what your trying to get off. I've let it go for 10-12 hours for a tough piece and also to experiment. Let the rock soak in tap water and the baking soda for a again a good couple hours...depends on how big the rock might be.

4. Don't need to cure the rock afterwards because it's (should be) 100% dead. What you might want to do is seed the rock to get life growing on it once again.

[Realshow]

Ok thank you for the information .
where can I find this stuff?