High Tide Aquatics

Killing Rock?

T.louderback

T.louderback

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I've never killed rock before and I want to be cautious so how do you do it? So far the rock has been sitting in a dry brute tub for moths and for the past week has been in a bleach bath. What do I do after that? Is a bleach bath even a good way to go? Sorry for the newbie question but I've never had to kill rock before haha
 
I left a bunch of rock out on the deck over summer, this winter when I use it I'm just going to throw it in some water and let it cycle w/ a skimmer. I don't like doing anything more to rocks, much too complicated and/or dangerous whether you boil it or acid bath.

If you've already bleached it and don't want to do too much more work I would simply soak it with a powerhead and a heavy dose of Prime, a few water changes & more prime I'd say given some time it should be clean.
 
When you do a water change add that water to the bucket with your dry rock.

You can cure it in old tank water or RO water. Change the water to allow more nutrients to leach out of the rock.

Add a powerhead and heater to it. This will help leach out the dead stuff.

If theres a LOT of dead stuff on there might take more work

Muriatic acid or bleach bath.


Whatever you do, never boil live rock. Very poisonous/dangerous.
 
Muriatic Acid wash IMO the best, nothing going to live and the rock bright white. Just make sure you have a lot of baking powder around to neutralize it when its done doing it work on the rocks.

after muriatic wash the Marco rocks where pure white, all the organics that were on it were vaporized and sterilized.

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I'm not too worried about the dead stuff because its from a pretty young tank, I just want to make sure the bleach won't kill fish or leach phosphate into the water. I'll try the RO and prime method
 
No cause the muriatic acid wash take off maybe around 1/4" off the surface of the rock and from what I've read around that's where most of your phos have leached up to. Knock on wood by no algae issues. After the acid eats up the top layer of the rock it does make it more porus and sharper.
 
I bleached various rocks once. After the bleach bath, I placed them to dry in the sun for about 3 weeks. Then I could not smell the bleach and placed them in a tank with plain RO water for about 1 week, just to be sure there won't be any bleach left. Then they went into my DT which was already populated with fish & corals. It was all fine.

I got the details of the bleach process from reef central threads.

The bleached dissolved all organics, before that the rocks were full of hair algae. After bleach & dry out, they were all white and clean.
 
Yeah if you go the bleach route make sure the rock does not still have some bleachy water sitting deep in the core of the rock.

I used Prime to detoxify the RO water just in case bleach was still there. Didn't try the evaporation method to remove chlorine but that should work too in theory.

Acid/bleach its all nasty stuff for a reef tank so if you do use it make sure it's GONE before putting rock into a tank for cycling.
 
Man I'm getting to the point of wanting to yank all my rock and nuking it too... between the aiptasias and hydroid colonies growing, there's just zero hope... but with my luck there will still be something somewhere and it'll just repopulate.
 
I don't disagree that it's the way to go... when starting a new tank. I don't think it'll do much good for me to do it now, when somewhere in my overflow, sump, etc, there might be a loan aiptasia that ends up getting back to the main tank and the whole process needs to start over again.
 
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