Cycling with dead liverock

[Bunny]

We moved and my 31lbs of liverock died out. I put it into my 30g with water and a powerhead and Im letting it do its thing. Ammonia, nirites, and nitrates are are obscenly high, so Im hoping it's cycling?

Thoughts on on cycling with dead liverock? I bought 14 more lbs and will use some to reseed the old stuff, but I dont want to put it in until the cycle is finished.

 

[Devilishturtles]

Sounds good to me. I used uncured liverock to cycle my tank with and it worked pretty good. If ammonia is high, it's cycling, which is all you need.

Good luck.

 

[Bunny]

Awesome How long do you think I have for it to be done? (dont want to add my live liverock until its done!)

 

[Ziggy953]

When you see 0 on the test for Ammonia and 0 on the test for NitrIte then you are ready for a large PWC to lower your NitrAtes and then you can start putting in your LR.

 

[MT79]

You may want to consider doing a PWC on the container holding the LR if ammo. is very high. That will prevent some of the life on the rock from being killed during the curing process. You want to keep as much bio-diversity as possible. It's generally recommended to keep ammo. under 2-3 ppm when curing w/ LR. Just something to consider, good luck.

 

[melosu58]

You might want to think about adding the new rock to the tank now so as to help with the cycle.This new LR you have is already cured? If not then it will cure as your tank cycles. If the ammonia is too high as Mike said then do a PWC so as to lower it and not kill off all your inverts.

 

[Bunny]

The LR in the tank right now is all dead- it dried out for about 2 weeks...Im not sure there is anything left for the ammonia to kill?
I havent added the "new" lr (rock is a few years old) because Im worried the ammonia will kill off the good stuff on the new rock, so the new rock is in my 10g nano