Dipping live rock

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Ryanerickson

By the way my system has .5 -1ppm nitrate and unreadable phosphate as of yesterday.

To be clear, this was in no way an attack on your personal rock, just used rock in general, and accumulating too much of it "just because"

[Ryanerickson]

Lol no worries and I agree with the clean is better comment if anything was building up crud or getting dirty looking it would be gone I just would hate to see good rock be wasted

[jason604]

Lol I only put those beautiful pieces in the sump for now till I have more time this weekend to rearrange my rock work. Also gives time the those amazing pieces u gave me to acclimate to my lights. They look awesome under my LEDs!!
Are acro crabs bad? I did find a lot of baby snail with white and purple strips

Originally Posted by Ryanerickson

The rock Jason is talking about is from my system I have a 55 gallon sump that is hooked up to a reef flow baracuda the flow in the sump is very strong. Also for water changes once a week the sump gets 100% drained and filled back up in less then 3 minutes. Because of the high flow in my sump there is zero debri in it about 50% off the rock is 3/4 to 100% encrusted in sponge. I totally disagree with getting rid of old rock I actually think a lot of my success with sps is because of all the rock in my system and it's only getting better with age. The pieces I gave Jason were a bunch of smaller pieces as he requested I made sure not to give away my sponge though as he wanted pieces for his display. The rock will not hurt your display and I don't see any reason not to ad a bit more up top. Last month I hooked nick (slyguy00) with 30-40 pounds for his new tank it all went in his display his tank is proof alone that it's healthy he had no algae bloom and only pest he found was one little acro crab zero aptasia! Hope you don't waste such nice rock in your sump Jason By the way thanks for the corals.

[pinkreef]

A wrasse should eat up those snails for you

[Ryanerickson]

The little snails are reef safe btw if you like them.

[asylumdown]

I think there's value in both approaches, replacing vs. keeping. The condition of the rock and how it will impact a system over time can be affected by so many different things over the course of a few years, most of which you'll never be able to really test for in any significant way.

As a general rule I look at rock that's in systems that have never had algae problems (or haven't had them in many months/years), and have always been actively maintained to have very low dissolved nutrients as being less likely to be a source of problems. Rock that's spent time in nutrient laden waters and/or supporting lush macro algae growth are more likely to cause you issues and likely require cooking, maybe even following bleaching or a treatment with muriatic acid. If it's from a sump where there's no light, I'd look at the condition of the rocks in the tank above to try and get an idea of what sort of nutrient regime those rocks have been exposed to over time.

However, for me personally, if it was just to increase real estate for corals in my own tank and my tank was already up, running, and stable, I would probably just go with dead marco or fiji rock that had been cooked for a few weeks. Not sure why you'd need live rock from another system when the dead stuff will eventually end up as live after a few months in an already matured system. The risks of adding rock from another system unless there's a specific reason to do it outweigh any potential benefit compared to using dead rock IMO, regardless of how pristine the original system was.

If this is a new set up and this is 100% of your rock, then it's a totally different story. Getting rock from someone else's sump, assuming that sump and system in general are well maintained is probably a whole lots safer than getting rock from a fish store holding tank. You'll have an instantly cycled tank with cured rock, and you'll know the history of the rock and what it's potential issues might be. Rock from holding tanks are a total crap shoot, and I shudder to think what a test for nitrate and phosphate in one of those bins would return.

[jason604]

I got rocks from him from convienience cuz I got a bunch of frags from him. Anyways, I thought u can't put dry rock into an established tank because it will cause a "new tank syndrome"

Originally Posted by asylumdown

I think there's value in both approaches, replacing vs. keeping. The condition of the rock and how it will impact a system over time can be affected by so many different things over the course of a few years, most of which you'll never be able to really test for in any significant way.

As a general rule I look at rock that's in systems that have never had algae problems (or haven't had them in many months/years), and have always been actively maintained to have very low dissolved nutrients as being less likely to be a source of problems. Rock that's spent time in nutrient laden waters and/or supporting lush macro algae growth are more likely to cause you issues and likely require cooking, maybe even following bleaching or a treatment with muriatic acid. If it's from a sump where there's no light, I'd look at the condition of the rocks in the tank above to try and get an idea of what sort of nutrient regime those rocks have been exposed to over time.

However, for me personally, if it was just to increase real estate for corals in my own tank and my tank was already up, running, and stable, I would probably just go with dead marco or fiji rock that had been cooked for a few weeks. Not sure why you'd need live rock from another system when the dead stuff will eventually end up as live after a few months in an already matured system. The risks of adding rock from another system unless there's a specific reason to do it outweigh any potential benefit compared to using dead rock IMO, regardless of how pristine the original system was.

If this is a new set up and this is 100% of your rock, then it's a totally different story. Getting rock from someone else's sump, assuming that sump and system in general are well maintained is probably a whole lots safer than getting rock from a fish store holding tank. You'll have an instantly cycled tank with cured rock, and you'll know the history of the rock and what it's potential issues might be. Rock from holding tanks are a total crap shoot, and I shudder to think what a test for nitrate and phosphate in one of those bins would return.

[asylumdown]

How do you define 'new tank syndrome'?

Are you talking about a spike in ammonia? That's only possible if the rocks you're putting in have lots of dead stuff on them. Marco rocks have very little on them that could cause an ammonia spike, but some of the dry fiji rock that I've seen looks like it might.

That can be mitigated by letting them sit in salt water for a week or so, but if it was a small amount of rock relative to the system, and the system was mature, I'm not sure I'd even bother doing that. A mature system has many different pathways for dealing with ammonia, and it's capacity is pretty elastic. It's why you don't see ammonia spikes every time you add a new fish to a mature system.

Anyway I'm pretty relaxed about most of this stuff, so other people might disagree, and it is technically possible for other things your don't want to leach out of the rock like phosphates, or to cause a spike in nitrates, so it's never bad advice to say let it cure in a bucket of salt water with a power head for a week or two, but that's about as far as I'd go. If you did that, you're pretty much guaranteed for it's measurable effect on your system, other than increasing real estate, to be nil.

ETA: the only other effect of adding dry dead rock to a system that I've read about is some sort of temporary impact on alkalinity. Not sure of the chemistry behind it or if it would be a big deal if it actually happened, but that too could be mitigated by soaking the rocks in salt water for a week or two first.