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SMiles

Curing Live Rock

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7 Comments
by
SMiles
, 02-02-2010 at 11:34 PM (1661 Views)
A week into my first experience curing LR and beginning to wonder if I'm doing it right. I bought 100 lbs of rock from a wholesaler in California and picked it up at the Seattle airport. I have placed the rock in a 30 gallon Rubbermaid trash can full of salt water (about .022 sg) and have a 600 lph submersible sitting on top of the rock with a pipe running to the bottom. I am heating the water to about 78 f. I can see water movement, but not as much as I expected. After a week the water is clear (maybe a bit yellow), and there is really not much odor. I have pulled it all out once and rearranged to make sure everything get's flow, and really nothing was that smelly. I was expecting the big stink based on all that I have read.

The order for the rock was placed at about 5 PM one afternoon and I had it in water the next morning by 9. Did I just get lucky and get fresh rock?

By the way, I'm new to this forum as of two weeks ago and happy to be here.

SM

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Comments

  1. Trido's Avatar
    YOur on the right track. If there wasnt alot of algea etc on the rock then you wont experience massive die off causing the stink.
  2. HAWAII's Avatar
    Some people raise the salinity to 1.040 for 15 to 20 minutes to avoid any uninvited guest into the tank. check your ammonia level and make sure you are at 0 before you add the rocks to the tank.
  3. Myteemouse's Avatar
    another way to test you LIve rock is to dump about a 1/4 cup of ammonia into the water
    the next day your ammonia should be 0
    if not your not done cureing.
    If it is more than 0 then your not hurting anything you're just helping kick start the beneficial bacterias..
  4. SMiles's Avatar
    Thanks for the coments all. I did a 25% water change tonight and ran some tests on the water I removed: Ammonia 0, Nitrate 25ppm, Phos 1 ppm, pH 7.8. Any worries??
  5. HAWAII's Avatar
    PH is low.. if you have corals you should have it at 8.2-8.4
  6. SMiles's Avatar
    I should clarify, the tests were on my live rock curing experiment
  7. Trido's Avatar
    I would expect the PH to be low due to lack of aeration and high levels of DOC's from curing. NO worries.