OLD DEAD and DRIED Live Rock...?

[inkme]

Hi I am new to your forum and I have a live rock question for you all. My friend gave me some live rock that he had from his old reef tank. The rock has been in a box for about a year and is all dried out. I have a custom 20-gallon Nano tank that has been up for about three months now that I would like to eventually add the rocks to.

My question is how is the best way to cure and culture these old dried out rocks. I was planning on giving them a good fresh water scrub and soak for a couple of days. Then I was going to put them in a 20-gallon long tank that I have and fill it with salt water, do a water change and add some live rock and rubble.

Any thoughts???

 

[Trogdor]

my first reaction would be to cure it like you would any rock. add it to a bucket with a power head and maybe a heater. let it sit for a week and test your water. I would watch it for a few weeks to see if you get an ammonia spike...if not then i say add it to the tank. otherwise let it cycle out then add it.

 

[reefman23]

I agree with Trogdor, but I would also scrub it really well with a brush to get off as much of the leftover dead materials as possible.

Jesse

 

[inkme]

Thanks for your advice sounds like I’m on the right track… I think that I am going to throw them in my friend’s 29 gallon fuge after they have cycled. Get them all full of life before I add them to my tank…

 

[skipm]

One thing I want to point out from a similar past experience, if the rock was ever in a tank that was treated with copper there is still residual copper in the LR. I got some old dried out rock like you describe and added it to some LR from a smaller tank and let the whole thing run its cycle, when I tried adding cleaners they kept dieing off right away. I kept testing and then retesting and all of the tests came back fine. The idea of copper finally cmae to me one night while I was thinking about the tank so I took a water sample to the LFS the next day (I have never used copper so I didn't have a test kit for it) and the copper level was at the same level as a high copper dose. I am not saying this rock is bad but I would probably check it for copper after it has been in water for awhile but before adding it to your friends refugium (or you could contmainate his system with copper).

 

[inkme]

Thanks for your warning I will be sure to watch for that. Definitely before putting it in my friend’s sump… He would wana Kung Fu for sure if I contaminated his tank…