Myka's 69 SPS Tank 2015

[Myka]

So I decided to acid wash the old formerly live, then dried dead rock. The latest reading was still over 100 ppm nitrate and 0.5 ppm phosphate after two 100% water changes (no change noted). I made some strong acid! I managed not to burn myself though, so that's a bonus.

I donned goggles, beautiful yellow rubber gloves, and shorts, tank, and sandals (ha!). I bought two 900 mL bottles of muriatic acid and poured them into 1 1/2 gallons of tap water. I dipped the rocks one at a time, and overdid the first one in about 12 minutes - that's some powerful mix! The rest of the rocks got about a 5-8 minutes dip, tap water rinse, tap water plus baking soda rinse (1 1/2 containers baking soda and about 3 gallons of water), then back into the rock tub filled with RO. A couple hours later I test the RO at pH 7.8 so I guess the rinse was sufficient. I will test nitrate and phosphate in a few days and see if there was any progress.



Here's the first rock getting half dissolved (lol):

[Doug]

Braver than I

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Doug

Braver than I

It's not that bad Doug. I've acid washed rocks before in much lower dilution for a much longer time (hours rather than minutes), but I found that some rocks require more time, and others require less. So I decided to dip them one at a time. I didn't want to spend all day doing it, so I made the acid strong. I didn't realize it would be that strong! It took me less than an hour to do it all include setup and cleanup, and cost me $12 for the acid and 40 gallons of RO. Pretty straight forward as long as you're careful about splashing.