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Old 01-27-2005, 09:21 AM
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Rikko Rikko is offline
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I cured by rock as per Calfo:

(Paraphrasing)
The BEST thing you can do while curing fresh rock is to have massive water movement and aeration.
The NEXT best thing you can do is have oversize skimmers running in the curing tubs, even better is to have 2 and change the cups alternately to not interrupt skimmate production.

I didn't have a skimmer when I cured my 70 lbs of Tonga and doubt I would ever bother (well, I did have a piece of PVC with some bio balls in it and an air stone at the bottom, and a nasty foam would overflow and spill onto the lid of the Rubbermaid tub, but that's far too gross to be called a skimmer.. It got thrown onto the back lawn after a couple days). I used two 18 gallon Rubbermaid tubs. Each had a heater, an air pump with a big airstone, and a Maxijet powerhead with the venturi attachment running. I kept tossing in baking soda to keep the water buffered and the pH up enough, and tested my ammonia daily. When ammonia reached or exceeded 1ppm I did a 50% water change in the tubs. Once you detect high nitrites, pay a little more attention to ammonia. Once ammonia drops to zero, you're done and the rock is ready to party. Mine took 9 days and it's absolutely gorgeous. All sorts of macroalgaes, foraminiferans, corraline, chitons, bivalves, and "something" (some worm thing inside the rock that seems to reach out holes to grab stuff.. I can't even photograph it to try and get an ID) survived to go into the display.

If I ever need rock again, it'll be as fresh as possible. From what I've seen, "pre-cured" usually just means it's been left in gross water to fester. It might not kill your tank, but it also doesn't have half the exciting stuff that was alive on it when it came in.
We're getting some fresh Tonga rock at the Pet Gallery next week which we're going to cure there. I'll see how cost-effective it is to cure rock in a quality manner, but there's probably a good reason why most places' cured rock is white or brown.
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