Cooking and Curing Rock....

[Starry]

Myka wrote a good write up on cooking live rock.
See here:

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=44859

[hfp75]

Thought I'd post a little update...

Thanks for the information from the other threads. My endevours are not yet complete....

Bucket that is curing... Doing well, no fowl smells & no more mold on top. I have been dumping the water and replacing it with my old tank water whenever I do a water change. Most of the visible algae is gone, just a bit of green hair..... its still in the dark with a heater, power head & an air stone. I put in 4 small crabs to start munching on whatever is edible in there. I'll be doing a water change tonight so I will see how its looking farther down towards the bottom of the bucket as well as the parameters.

Cleaning and cooking rock... As you initially saw I dunked it all into a Muratic Acid / water bath. Then the rock was subjected to two soaks in a bleach bucket. First soak was 2 cups of bleach and 2-3 days, followed by a rinse and another 2 cups with another 2-3 days of soaking time, then it was rinsed and soaked in water for about 5 days. No more bleach smell and it all came out onto my table top.

(I'll probably need to run a dechlorinator when I start it in a new tank due to the possibility of residual bleach)

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps09156610.jpg

I have now started the same process for the second batch of rock.

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps217a3611.jpg

It'll take a few days but by the end of the month it'll be complete.

Once its all done then the rock is ready to start cooking.

I will have to decide if the rock I am 'curing' is going to be clean enough to run in a tank or if it will need the acid / bleach / cooking treatment first. We will wait and see.

[hfp75]

So, little update....

August 10....

For the rock that was curing I have been regularly changing the water out with my old tank water. My tanks params are usually about P04 <.1 and NO3 of 20-50 depending on my last water change. Initially My air stone wasn’t working right so it had a bit of a fowl smell (aerobic vs anaerobic) - but burning NO3, the initial PO4 after soaking with this rock was 1.0 !!!!

After changing the airstone out for one that worked the fowl smell has gone away and and after a few water changes my saturation on PO4 is 0.5 so, we are on the way. There is no visible algae on any of this rock any more. It has been under a black thick garbage bag - no light.

For the rock that I cleaned and an going to bake.... it has all been acid washed and bleached. It has also been dried and is just waiting in boxes....

[htfn]

I bought Pukani rocks, Tonga shelfs and branches from Eli, Fiji Reef Rock while I was in Calgary. I'm following his direction to curing the rocks.

>> Curing process
>> this is well a recipe for curing dry rock from fijireefrock.com
>> as I have been testing for the last few month with it not to bore you with the different techniques let get started with what I found works as best and shortest timing possible.Please feel free to add or discuss any view for any type of dry rocks curing on this post to help everyone,...
>>
>> Played equally with all the 4 types of dry rock (Pukani,fiji premiun,Tonga shelf and Tonga branch) in different styles of vats.
>>
>> 4 vats containing separatly each type of dry rock
>> 2 vats with mix of all types of dry rock
>>
>> lets talk about the 4 vats 1st
>> all 4 vats where setup in the warehouse with tap water and salinity of 1.24ppm temperature between 82 and 84 degree with couple of power heads for circulation. No water change or skimmer at all.Total darkness with only ambient day light.
>> let it sit for a week and tested for ammonia witch was over 8 believing much higher test readout.
>> XX Over skimmed my reef system from home then added roughly 2 cups of fresh skim-mate to each vat on day 7.
>> Kept checking for tap top off every 4 days and testing ounce a week...
>> On week 3 tested 0 for ammonia witch I thought too early then tested with couple kits and still readout at 0 yes the water had a yellow tinge to it.
>> From that time until now I still feed the rock with fresh ski-mate as I do not want to kill the nytrifying bacteria and still readout at 0.
>> I then decided to bring couple hundred lbs to add to my fully loaded system that contains roughly 500lbs of old live rock.
>> Placed some in the sump and some in the display with no issues going on 3 weeks now and amazingly no algae or diatom outbreak.(my lighting consist of only royal blue spectrum LED with only 2 hours of whites a day.
>>
>> Conclusion 3 weeks in the dark with nothing more that growing nitrifying bacteria and seeded with skimmer bacteria ready for a system.
>>
>> 2 vats curing in my home next to my main system one vat directly plumbed to my sump and the other vat on its own.
>>
>> 1st vat directly to my system
>> Nothing special besides making sure in the dark, the temperature is at 82 degree and one power-head for circulation.Oh yes about 140lbs of mixed dry reef rock in that vat.
>> I kept adding HC-GFO and carbon to my system nothing more. Testing ammonia witch gave a reading of .25 for day 3 to day 6.Every day after that readout of 0 ammonia 3 weeks ago.The rock is ready for main system.
>>
>> Conclusion after I suggest and to be on the safer side 10 days of a ratio of 3lbs live to 1 lb of mix dry frock it is safe to be used on a system.
>>
>> 2nd vat 100 glns sitting near my main system
>> About 100 lbs of mix dry rock in the dark,one power head temperature of 82 degree no skimming salinity of 1.24ppm
>> after 3 day tested ammonia of over 8 as I suspected.
>> I would remove every night remove one gallon of the vat water place it in my system and replace it with water again from my system.
>> Did that for 10 days as on day 8 ammonia readout of 0 kept testing everyday different timing and always got readout of 0.
>> Now I replace 2 gallons of that water with main system water ounce every week and keeping all that rock for my new build
>>
>> Any and all dry rock need cycling time and patience takes a very important role in this as I seen people buy my dry rocks place it in a system and have it cycling with full lights on as it will be loaded with algae and have much longer curing process of ugly green rocks to go through.
>>
>> There are lots of different methods for curing the dry frock but I found the above to be most effective.
>>
>> I don't recommend using any additives to try and speed up the curing process as I always believed the natural way tops all.

[hfp75]

Aug 12....

I took an old tank (60-65 gal) and put it up on my workbench and put in a pair of powerheads, filled it with water and got it running - with a working air stone. Then I put in all the cleaned rock. Due to the possibility of residual bleach I also put in a bunch of Prime.

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps55c6b805.jpg

Then today (a day later) I put in the rock that I was curing....... (on the right side - darker)

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps712fbc28.jpg

Now I'll let it run for a few days and change out some water, my garage is usually dark which will help decrease any unwanted algae growth.....

My goal is to get all the rock cycled and see what the PO4 is..... If I need to run ROWA then I will, but a few H2O changes should lower any residual PO4. My last residual test on the curing portion of the rock was PO4 of 0.5.

[hfp75]

Well, this thread will take a bit of a change. It has been about prepping rock, but I moved my tank yesterday - THAT IS A PITA...... and HEAVY... made me want out of the hobby and my wife thinks I am absolutely crazy.

Anyways here is a pic of it strapped into my truck.... I'd have taken more pics but my camera died. All my coral and fish in bags and buckets would have been a few great pics but...

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps5bc8c692.jpg


Last night I got enough of it up and running that I could go to bed. I had 4 fish die yesterday - I should have added them in first instead of last. The rest of my fish made it. Even "Side-Ways-BOB" my fish that had a stroke or something and only turns in one direction and will bump into rocks, ect (that was last month).

Here is a pic of everything this morning with a few lights on. I am refreshed to see the corals coming out with the light and the fish swimming around. I was forced to use my rock tank as I was out of space and my tank was too murky to get it all in last night.

My Tank 50 Gal - back up and running...

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...pscaaf661e.jpg

Rock Tank 65 Gal

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps6b782bf5.jpg


I have done one water change already and there is another on the way. Two 20% water changes today - so 40% (+/-) changed today should help if there were any water issues.

I am also running a heavy load of Rowa to clean up the 'rock tank'. Don't want any outbreaks now that there is a light on it, there is a bunch of established live rock in there though so it should be good.

It looks ugly but its all alive and well....

I need a new tank and will start a New tank build soon. Both of these tanks are running in the garage so it all needs into the house before it gets to cold....

[Ulmo]

I didn't go through any of this trouble to cure my pukani. But then again, I did let it cure for 10+ weeks. 80 lbs in a 44 gallon bin with a heater, power head, occasional water changes with bacteria, a sealed lid. After ammonia read zero, treated for a couple weeks with agent green, phosphate gone. Done.

Any rock that starts dry and dead should be able to go through this process easily. But I'm a noob and don't know much.

[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.

[hfp75]

I have recently setup my new 80g tank, here is the new thread....

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...850#post916850