curing dry rock

[eli@fijireefrock.com]

www.fijireefrock.com
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.