Quote:
Originally Posted by bignose
This smells horrible! my house reeks of watery death. I've been changing the water every 2 hours or so to try and keep the smell down.
One quick question: I am circulating with fresh water right now until all the dead stuff falls out of the rock. Is this right or should I be using SW the whole time? The rock is dead I didn't think it would hurt anything!
Does it matter if I'm not using a light?
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Any rock where there's been a lot of die-off will stink to high heaven as it is re-cycling. Putting it in a Rubbermaid bin in your garage would probably have been less nasty.
You should definitely keep using SW as the ammonia given off by the dead stuff will help feed and repopulate the nitrifying bacertia.
In hindsight, after the tank was "killed" if you friend simply left it in SW in a Rubbermaid in a garage with a powerhead running - you probably don't even need a heater unless it's the dead of winter - the live rock would have stayed quite "live" for a long, long time. Live rock is surpringly tough and resilient. Freezing it just killed everything and took up freezer space.