Uncured Live Rock: How bad does it smell?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

EL Diablo

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Jul 20, 2004
Messages
320
Location
USA
I found a good price at a LFS for Marshall Island LR.
Half the price as I have seen other places.

The LR is not cured. The guy from the LFS said that adding uncured LR
is a great way to cycle my new tank.

At that price I plan to add 90# of the LR

I am also planning to add 40# of LS with the LR

My tank is a 72gallon Bow. It is in my living room.

My questions are:
Can I just place the uncured LR into my tank to cure and cycle my tank?

I have read that uncured LR smells.
Will it stink up my house? how bad will it be and for how long?

Thanks for the Advice!
 
EL Diablo said:
My questions are:
Can I just place the uncured LR into my tank to cure and cycle my tank?
Yes, just be sure you do regular water changes depending on ammonia levels. You might even need to do them daily. With uncured LR, the lower you can keep the ammonia and nitrites throughout the cycle process, the more animals that will survive.

I have read that uncured LR smells.
Will it stink up my house? how bad will it be and for how long?
You betcha!!
How longs going to depend on the amount of die off and wether or not you maintain the water changes. If you have a skimmer it will definately help. Running with GAC will help with the smell.

FWIW, I wouldn't bother with the LS. Dry aragonite sand will work just as well and will be seeded by the LR. Save your $$.

Cheers
Steve
 
It will stink up the room.. you would be better off curing it outside of the house or in a basement if you have one. It's hard to say how long but expect around a weeks worth of foul odors.
 
i just purchased 75lbs of uncured LR. some of the pieces stank like rotten egg! i cleaned whatever was rotting and put it in the tank. after a day, the room stank. not bad enough to get kicked out, but enough that you would notice it after passing the room. after a while the smell died down though. just go for it!
 
Everyone says it stinks. do you think it is bad enough where the smell would
leak out my front door and into the hallway?

I live in an apartment complex and that would be bad. 8O

the tank isn’t to far from the front door and there are no rooms separating them.

If the smell is just in the living room for a few days I can leave the windows open
and have a fan blow as much air out of the apartment.

Or just buy cured LR for a little more $ and hope I don’t get any bad hitch hikers

What do you guys think?
 
It's definitely not something I would do again, but if you are up to the extra maintenance - and there is a lot of it - then you should go for it just for the experience. If you keep the room well ventilated and do a lot of water changes, it shouldn't affect anyone else in the vicinity.
 
I am about to convert my 55 here @ work to a salt tank an dI am going to use some base rock and then seed it with some LR from my own tank. just scrape off the good stuff and see what happens !
 
Thanks for all the input.

I am heavily leaning towards LR.com now
The colors on those rocks are awesome.

From what I've read I can just place the LR from LR.com
straight from the box and into my Tank to start cycling.
Seems much easier to deal with than the uncured process.

Now what are the odds of getting a Mantis?
Read bad things about them evil little guys.

Can’t wait to get the LR and LS in. Almost there :D
 
well there rock did not smell at all when i got it. and i did not get a mantis. or if i did i still have not sen him yet. but i did see a hermit crab dead on the floor today. i think he might be in there but have not seen it. the rock has been in there since may i think.
 
I got LR.com rock too. I never really got an ammonia spike after adding it, and my nitrates are already approaching 10ppm, with 0 nitrite.
Their stuff is good.
If you order from them, specifiy the size of tank, and that it's new, so they can select an appropriate range of sizes of rock so you can create a good rockscape.
 
I had at least 3 mantis on 100# of LR.com rock, but also got cukes, hermits, snails, sponges, mullosks, , worms, corals, urchins, starfish, and milllions of pods. I literally find something new every day.

With all that good stuff, a couple of manits, glass anemonies and crabs are a small price to pay.
 
Ok,

I just purchased 80# of LR from LR.com. Can't wait to get it! :D

hope it comes tomorrow, not sure.
Lets pray I dont get any unwanted hitch hikers

Thanks for all the help Everyone,
 
You can go to liverocks.com, pick the rock amount, and enter your zip code, and that will give you the total with overnigth DHL shipping. For 40lbs, from Florida to Nebraska, it was like $57 for my shipping I think.
 
kenor33 said:
Mind If I ask what 80#'s hit ya for counting shipping? I figure thats about what i'll order as soon as I get the money :p

I paid 449.78 including shipping. Cant wait to get it in the Tank!
Which comes to 5.62 per pound, Not bad.
 
lets see, could sell old baseball cards, the family cat and ..umm my computer maybe but then I would miss chatting on AA :) oh well time to get another credit card I guess
 
kenor33 said:
lets see, could sell old baseball cards, the family cat and ..umm my computer maybe but then I would miss chatting on AA :) oh well time to get another credit card I guess
You know you don't really need both kidneys :wink: :D
 
good idea Atari :D use a kidney to get the LR then use the new credit card to make the tank all it can be 8) hmmmm now I have to figure out a way to do all this without the wife finding out.
 
Back
Top Bottom