Curing Rock
 

Bought some uncured rock from J&L. Interested in knowing minut details that I may not know about for curing rock.
I scubbed the rock by hand removing any obvious die off. So far I have the 40 lbs of live rock in a 20 gallon aquarium with salt water made from de-chlorinated tap water (not RO/DI). I have 2 Hagan 802s circulating the water that is at 78 degrees. I again lightly scrubbed the rock to remove any obvious die off and after one week I changed 100% of the the water. I am now at the end of my second week and not sure about nitrites, nitrates, & ammonia levels but imagine they are still very high and will check this weekend.

I was planning on doing a large water change using RO/DI water for the last week once the initial large scale die off occurred and the nitrates and ammonia begin to level off.

Very little light in the room as it is in a downstairs bathroom (no lid or light on the aquarium)

Anything else I should be doing?? Am I doing anything drasticlly wrong.

Re: Curing Rock
 

I would add light and a glass top to the tank, and do daily top ups with RO. Other than that, sounds okay to me.

Just a side comment, I have two Hagen 802s in my 72g bowfront. They churn up the water quite well in a tank that size. Am wondering if you have these 802s on full throttle or have them turned down. If full throttle, it must be quite a washing machine in there :eek:

I don't normally scrub off my rock, I know alot of people say you should but to be honest, I think the stuff that's dying off has some use. Sponge especially will really encourage a strong population of pods to grow quickly. Just my 2 cents worth.

Doug

Agreed. When I got my rock I did nothing with it, just threw it in the tank. Of course you can't do that with an established tank, but I still don't see any reason to scrub. You're not trying to kill things. Curing is just cycling in another tank. I'm no biological chemist but I don't see any reason to follow the complex regimen, with all the lighting requirements and water changes.

Thanks for the input. Scrub defined is with a toothbrush to remove any obvious dead material.

Any other comments.

Remove - why. The microorganisms in the water and on the rock will consume the detritus. By scrubbing it off you are just delaying the cycling process.

Dead sponges etc will take forever to decay and delay the curing process. They should definitely be scrubbed off imo.

there will be plenty of stuff left over to cycle the tank, the purpose of scrubbing is to limit the spike to raise the chance of live stuff living through the process.. also gives you the opertunity to remove algaes you don't want inyour tank.

Steve

Hmmm, so you're saying one should siphon out detritus or do a water change right after scrubbing?

I am saying you should scrub in a seperat tank/pail befor you put the rock into your tank.

Steve

Here's some shots of a piece of rock I cured:

This is day 5:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/psiico/day5.jpg

This is day 12:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/psiico/day12.jpg

This is day 26:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/psiico/day26.jpg

The whole process was done with 12 hour days and two 18 watt NO 5500k. The pods did most of the cleaning, as stated above. I added some crabs and snails on day 16. Just about all the red coralline is gone but there's lots of green growing and that patch of maroon survived and is spreading onto some reef rock.

Just one person's experiance.

Now is the perfect time to test calcium and alk levels. Raising calcium levels, if they have been depleted during the curing process will bring back your coraline algae. Wish I had paid more attention to alk and calcium when I was setting up all my tanks. I'm sure I would have a lot more coraline now if I had.

Here's a great article on alk and calcium:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

Yep, I've been working on Ca and Alk for the past month. I'm using aragocrete and reef rock and using that one piece to seed them so I had to. Just an experiment. I'm going to add some more liverock, though, I want some purple in there, and I'm making more aragocrete.

Here's a closeup of just how nasty that rock was. All I did to clean it was siphon the substrate clean once a week.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/psiico/closeup.jpg