skimmate with no biolad

[asylumdown]

If it was rock that had been in a tank for any amount of time, I'm not surprised. Cleaning and bleaching the rock will remove most of the life on it, but bleach is notorious for making things look cleaner than they actually are (i.e., the organics are still there, they're just the same colour as the rock). Plus all the tens of millions of micropores that would be filled with biofilms in mature rock that the cleaning would have never reached. It would have been cool had you weighed this rock the day after you first got it wet again, I bet there'd be a measurable decrease by now.

FWIW, I think you're doing it exactly right. You're doing what people do when they cook rock, only you're doing it with a skimmer on the system in conditions very similar to those the rock will be run in permanently. Only thing I'd do differently would be to turn off the lights, but if the algae isn't growing out of control, harvesting it might actually help the process along faster. Waiting until it depletes enough to stop emitting crap in to the water before you add anything else is going to save you months worth of trouble down the line IMO, so kudos to you for having the patience.

Are you ghost feeding? If you are I'd stop. If your skimmer is pulling that much crap out of the water, there's probably more than enough of a microbial food chain munching away at the rock's trapped organics to keep your pods and hermits fed.