Curing Lr

[jeasko]

have a big amount of LR that I took out of my tank about 2 years ago (about 15kg +) that has been left to dry in polystyrene crates that I am now considering curing and adding to the tank and external filter, after looking around it appears that there is no definate answer to if i need to run a skimmer? my reason for asking is that I have 2 spare power heads a spare heater and work in the lighting industry so wont have a problem getting lights sorted ( most likely t5 tubes as can see the need for mh) but my skimmer pump is burried deep in my 145ltr reef tank and i'm very reluctant to try and remove it especially just for the purpose of curing LR

if anyone has experience with curing either using a skimmer or not i'd be grateful for some advice, also time is no great problem here just seems the best thing to do with it rather than get rid of it as i doubt there is much call for dried previously cured LR

 

[-Nemo-]

How are you planning on curing it? Since its been dried out, all it is now is essentially dead base rock. You could just stick it into a mature tank and have no problem.

 

[jeasko]

But surely it would still cycle and more likely create an ammonia spike? And with a fully stocked tank that would not be desireable?

 

[-Nemo-]

If it's all dried out everything is dead, including the bacteria, there is nothing to cycle the tank with. If there's still some, for lack of a better word, "flesh" on it, that might trigger decomposition and therefore a cycle, but with it sitting out for two years, I would guess not.

 

[Donya]

Dead dried out stuff can cause nutrient spikes. Drying something out doesn't remove organics and other debris. This is an issue for dug-out-of-the-ground rocks that can have dessicated bits of vegetation hidden in/on them, not just dried rock from an aquarium. Dried dead stuff will rehydrate and then break down. Particularly mucky-looking dry rocks can smell pretty bad too while this happens (something I have a bit too much experience with). In addition to nutrient spikes, pH can also be affected. So, I would say it's not a good idea to put stuff like that in a stable system directly unless it's a rather small piece that you know is too small to cause any issue. Of course, the dead rock won't have anything live though even after dumping its nutrients into the water. To get it back to being proper LR that acts as a biofilter, you'll still need to seed it with something to introduce actual bacteria and other organisms.

Not sure how the skimmer comes into this...never heard of using a skimmer specifically for curing rocks.

 

[jeasko]

Donya guess that's what I was thinking about is all the stuff on the LR that has died off while drying, so my understanding then is that all I need is light, flow and heat to get this back to useable LR?

 

[Donya]

If you want to seed with expensive, high-quality rock, then obviously you'll want the light, heat, and better flow in order to accommodate the nice rock and help it spread. That's about it really. If you're not using fancy rock and just a few bits of microbes-only rock, IME you don't even necessarily need the light or even heat for that matter, depending on how warm the room is and how fast you want it done. I have a small LR curing tub (a cooler) that is pretty much in the dark and unheated. Those conditions can easily make rock tank-safe in a reasonable amount of time (2-3 weeks), it just won't colonize with interesting stuff, but that can happen in-tank too as soon as the rocks smell like damp soil. For flow I just have a single bit of airline tubing for surface agitation - the one corner you can't cut if you don't want to come home to a stink bomb one day.

EDIT: managed to drag & drop half of one sentence into the middle of another...fixed now.

 

[jeasko]

Ok so started the process off this evening by getting to water to right sg adding a heater and a pump with airline attached to get god flow and surface agitation, I'm now fighting my own mind on if I need to dose the water with ca and kh buffer? Part of me say yes and part of me says no!

Someone please put me out of my misery and tell me if I need to dose etc

 

[Donya]

I'm now fighting my own mind on if I need to dose the water with ca and kh buffer?

Test the water for both before you do anything. These are two things you should never just launch into dosing on a tank if you haven't tested the water first to see if its needed, otherwise you can produce disastrous results. If the KH is off (namely too low), then buffering is warranted. Ca is less important and mainly worth testing if the KH/pH are not going where you want them or if there is a lot of calcareous stuff that you are trying to keep going on the rock (lots of coralline, hitchhiker corals, etc.) - but even then the Ca uptake may be so slow that dosing is unnecessary. Testing the water will answer all and I bet you will not need to dose anything if your salt mix was good.

 

[jeasko]

Donya your a star!

I'll check the kh in the morning and see what it is will test ca to just to see, will likely leave the LR running for 2-3 weeks min just to get it started then start testing for ammonia nitrates etc

I'm using reef crystals so shouldn't be a big issue with readings ( says he hoping they ok!) but would rather check and now for sure

 

[jeasko]

Why are things simple in your mind but then get more complex as you go through with them

The rock I'm curing ( for want if a better term) has a lot of old coraline on it that had now turned yellow ish green/white, am I right In Thinking that this will never go back to the nice purple except maybe in time When the process starts again?

or will making sure ca at right level help kick start it again?

 

[Donya]

You can expect regrowth over the old, dead growth if it starts to come back, assuming it hasn't died off completely or is at least re-seeded with something. Light and other nutrients are equally as big a factor in that as Ca content, and on top of that Coralline can just be finicky in some environments. Most of my tanks have none of it because of that lol. Where I do have it, it has never been constant and is always either blooming or being knocked back by other things in the environment, which I presume is due to competition over nutrients and other trace elements I can't test for, since Ca has always been high.

 

[jeasko]

Just about all the LR in my display tank is purple so hopefully it will continue to seed in the tank, heater in the curing tub as is power head and airline, just awaiting my next visit to my contractors at work to pick u a pl lighting unit to light it as well ( shame I have to buy the 10000k lamp for it though ) so hopefully I'll get some coralline started before I introduce it to main tank

Once again though Donya many thanks

 

[kj23502]

You don't need to worry about lighting the curing tub since you have dead rock. All I do is a heater and power head. That's it.



Donya do you test for mag and kh regularly? If you keep all these high you should have coralline unless you have something eating it. If you keep things stable it's like death and taxes, inevitable.

I shoot for 1400 mag, 10 dKh Alk, and 430ish calc. I let my tank go for just 2 weeks and my alk went down to 7.4. Mag was at 1200. Had to add 13oz of Mag mix and 10 tsp of Alkalinity solution for two days to right it!

 

[Donya]

Donya do you test for mag and kh regularly? If you keep all these high you should have coralline unless you have something eating it. If you keep things stable it's like death and taxes, inevitable.

KH yes, Mag only sporadically since it's been more diagnostic for me than anything else and never turned up with a low reading (am actually sans-kit for it right now as a result). Chemistry is not the issue in this particular tank. What's at hand is that I have about 50 billion species of micro algae and other organisms all competing for the same nutrients and space. There are at least three types of calcareous microalgae alone, only one of them being the classic purple, and they are constantly fighting for space with little encrusting filter-feeding worms that want to blanket the rocks. Other animals are also constantly physically destroying each type of encrusting organism in varying amounts all the time (large hermits, chitons, etc.). Which algae is on top in such an environment is a function of a lot more than just the usual calc/alk/mag. Right now the dominant calcareous algae is some green thing that is murder to get off of the glass when it decides to grow there.