Dead Rock

[luntiz]

Well...after being gone for about 2 weeks, I've decided to take up the hobby again...I should had just kept it up instead of quitting and then starting up again (lost 4 fishes, 2 shrimps and 10 hermits to the LFS, not to mention tons of organisms on my now dead rock).

Well anyways, my question regards my now dead rock. I have 70 lbs of dead rock that has been out of water for 2 weeks. I've placed them into my 50 gallon tank and tested the water, Ammonia was pretty high, should I do a waterchange to get rid of the Ammonia or pick up more Live Rock right now to seed the organisms that eat up the ammonia? I wanted to get LR when my ammonia was zero to make sure the organisms from the Live Rock would remain alive.

 

[saltcreep1025]

i'd just leave that in, wait for the cycle to complete, and then add new live rock.

 

[luntiz]

How does it cycle without some bacteria to break the ammonia down? I'm sure my rocks have no life on them...unless the organism can survive the sun and freshwater wash...

 

[srgetz]

How does it cycle without some bacteria to break the ammonia down? I'm sure my rocks have no life on them...unless the organism can survive the sun and freshwater wash...

The same way it does in all new aquariums without lr, just add ammonia. The problem with putting lr in now is the ammonia could in turn kill life on the lr. If you do put lr in just do sizeable daily water changes to keep ammonia in check so critters stay alive.

 

[indy]

The bacteria you need exists to some extent on everything in there, it just needs some food (ammonia) to start reproducing and get the cycle going. You can actually cycle a completely bare tank, no sand or other material. The possible bioload would be minute, but the bacteria will live just on the glass surface.