What to do with really really ripe live rock?

[Abarnswell]

Yesterday, when I was at my LFS, I saw that they had just gotten in a brand new shipment of live rock, so I bought several pieces because the stuff looked really good. I put it in my 10 g. AGA that I am just setting up. There is live sand and live rock only in the tank.

Well, now that I have it home, I see that it is really RIPE. It smelled really bad at first, but now the smell is getting better. But, it has huge amounts of stuff (big chunks) hanging off it -- dead stuff -- and it's really messing up the sand bed and the water. Should I take those pieces of rock out of the tank and scrub them down a bit, to get the biggest pieces of organic dead stuff off them, or should I leave them alone? I think this tank will kick into the cycling period very quickly because of all the dead organic matter.

 

[Anonymous]

I would take it out and take a tooth brush or some other brush to it and get off all the dead sponges and stuff. I would also turn off the lights if you had them on cause your going to get a huge ammonia spike which will cause an algae bloom - diatoms, cyano, and hair - if there are lights on. Another option would be to remove the rock scrub it and put it in a bucket with a power head and let it cook some on its own for a couple weeks to a month and then reintroduce it. I would also do a massive water change in the 10 gal right now.

 

[drty811]

i totally agree with john....get it out and clean it. IMO i would put it in a bucket like john said for awhile. if you dont its going to make for a huge headache later.