Methods of curing base rock

[ekean45]

I am about to start a 60 gallon SW tank - no plans for corals right now. I have a ton of base rock that was sitting in a storage bin outdoors. There was soil and leaves mixed in also from being outside. It was used in a SW tank about 3 years ago. I would hate to get rid of it because there are some beautiful pieces with a lot of surface area and also with many nooks and crannies for fish to hide.

Can anyone advise on a few methods and your experiences to cure the rock? I was planning on cycling the tank with adding live sand and live some live rock.

Thanks!

 

[carey]

Welcome to the forum!!


You can just rinse it the old rock off really well and add it to the live sand and other live rock that you buy. It will become "live" as well in a few weeks and soon it will look like any live rock that you buy.

 

[ekean45]

Thanks! I've read about a few methods that include submerging the rock in a water/bleach mix before putting it in the tank. Have you heard of this? I'm a little leery of only rinsing off the rock and then just putting it in the tank since there was soil and probably other live bugs living in the rock.

 

[carey]

I would really clean them up as best you can. Anything living should be killed by the salt water and cycling process I would think.

 

[CleverBs]

yeah you dont have to worry about it quite as much as you may think. giving it a good cleaning and scrubbing will do the job. IME stay away from bleach solutions when it comes to fish, if you really must do it then so be it but if there's a way around it take it. any organic will just break down during the cycle process and will aid in the production of ammonia for your cycle. have you seen the critters on live rock? if so then I wouldnt guess a few bugs will do much harm to the water chemistry.

 

[melosu58]

We have an article about that in our SW articles section.