How to cure my new live rock?

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rnb62679

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Sep 29, 2011
Messages
40
Location
California
Hi there, I am fairly new at this. I have read alot about how to cure live rocks before adding them to your tank. I have a 50gal tank with 4 chromis and a tang, I just purchased some live rock but do not know exactly what I need to do before adding it to my tank. Any advise will be helpful, thanks!
 
First off, you definitely do not want to put that uncured live rock in a tank with fish. The die-off will cause an ammonia spike which might kill your fish.

You're gonna want to put the rocks in a holding tank of some sort. It doesn't even really need to be a fish tank, just as long as it could hold your live rock and enough salt water to submerge it all.

You'll also want some circulation pumps if you can spare them. From my understanding they aren't a must, but they might help the process along by preventing the accumulation of dead spots.

Filtration doesn't need to be too fancy. A HOB filter would probably be sufficient, though if you had a canister that might be a little better. I think it's even possible to get away without even having a filter, not sure about that though. But if you do use a filter, you might want to run some carbon in it, as curing live rock can really smell.

The process can take anywhere from 2 weeks to a month or longer, depending on how "uncured" your rock is. Mine took about 3 weeks, but it stopped smelling after 2.

Oh, and I never did a water change while curing my live rock, but I was advised that I only had to if my ammonia skyrocketed (above 5 ppm), not sure about that though.

Good luck! Hope it doesn't smell too bad!
 
Thanks for the info, I do have a place where i am planning on putting the rock, question is I dont have a heater, do I really need one? I am planning on putting it in the garage will something happen if the teperature drops or gets higher?
 
Well, that's a good question, but unfortunately I don't really have a good answer for you. Hopefully someone else will lol.

I wouldn't imagine heat would be too much of a problem, I'm down in Miami, and I cured my live rock in the garage with water temperatures around 87, with no negative effects.

I'd figure that the cold might make it go slower though. Essentially you're trying to get stuff to die and rot off, and higher temperatures would probably be more conducive for that than low temperatures.

I'd also be a bit concerned about temperature fluctuations causing some sort of damage to the live rock. But again, I can't tell you for certain..
 
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