HELP! I need advice from someone who knows Live Rocks!

Elias

New Member
Soooo, i'm new to the reefing hobby as you soon will learn, i forgot to add salt solution into my aquarium before adding 5 kg of live rock, so what now? is the live rock dead after having spent 5 hours in freshwater or will it survive if i start curing it tomorrow in 10 hours, yes i did also not know about curing...

Also i would want to know what happens during the curing, does the biological material and pests die of during the ammonia spike and is scrubbing the rock enough? or should i dip live rock before adding it just like one does with corals. I have searched about the topic now but i don't get any concrete answers.
 

DaveK

Well-Known Member
You can consider the rock dead. Maybe you might get lucky and something survived, but I doubt it.

There are three possible options.

1) use the rock as is, expecting a 100% die off, massive ammonia spike, and once the ammonia and nitrite drop to 0, a big nitrate reading. At this point, you do a 100% water change. Then add a few small pieces of new live rock to reseed the original rock. This whole process will take some time.

2) discard the original rock, and replace it with new live rock, and cycle things correctly.

3) use a separate container use bleach and FW to clean the existing rock. Then do several soakings for several days each in FW. The rock is now more or less the dry reef rock you get in the LFS. Set up the tank using the rock, and add a few pieces of new live rock to seed it. This process will also take some time.

Notes -

Curing live rock is the process of keeping newly harvested live rock in SW and letting any die off occur. The process is complete when ammonia and nitrate peak and drop to 0. This is best done is a separate container, but can be done in a tank if it's an initial setup.

Cycling a tank is similar, but not quite the same. Here you usually start with partly or fully cured live rock and you want to get the tank started from a biological standpoint. Rock and SW go into the display tank. Often a small piece of shrimp is added to be a source of ammonia. Like curing live rock you wait until ammonia and nitrate peak and drop to 0.

There is a lot of overlap here, and it is possible to do both together.

Once the process is complete, test nitrate. You may need to make a very large change of water to bring nitrate down to a reasonable level. Some people change 100% of the water at this point.
 

Elias

New Member
You can consider the rock dead. Maybe you might get lucky and something survived, but I doubt it.

There are three possible options.

1) use the rock as is, expecting a 100% die off, massive ammonia spike, and once the ammonia and nitrite drop to 0, a big nitrate reading. At this point, you do a 100% water change. Then add a few small pieces of new live rock to reseed the original rock. This whole process will take some time.

2) discard the original rock, and replace it with new live rock, and cycle things correctly.

3) use a separate container use bleach and FW to clean the existing rock. Then do several soakings for several days each in FW. The rock is now more or less the dry reef rock you get in the LFS. Set up the tank using the rock, and add a few pieces of new live rock to seed it. This process will also take some time.

Notes -

Curing live rock is the process of keeping newly harvested live rock in SW and letting any die off occur. The process is complete when ammonia and nitrate peak and drop to 0. This is best done is a separate container, but can be done in a tank if it's an initial setup.

Cycling a tank is similar, but not quite the same. Here you usually start with partly or fully cured live rock and you want to get the tank started from a biological standpoint. Rock and SW go into the display tank. Often a small piece of shrimp is added to be a source of ammonia. Like curing live rock you wait until ammonia and nitrate peak and drop to 0.

There is a lot of overlap here, and it is possible to do both together.

Once the process is complete, test nitrate. You may need to make a very large change of water to bring nitrate down to a reasonable level. Some people change 100% of the water at this point.

What is this FW, SW and LFS you're referring to?

NVM i realiced now that if SaltWater and FreshWater but i still don't know what LFS means.
 
Top