help. live rock desease!

[foma2000]

so a month ago i got 20 lbs of live rock from liveaquaria.com and it looked really bad. so bad that i just put it into the fuge. it had this weird covering on it that was a redish brown crust on parts of the rock. i didn't think to much of it then to day i decided to find out if anything was underneath it so i picked alittle of it off the rock. underneath was this brown furry stuff, that almost looked like fungis. when i tuched it a bit of brown goo floated off into the tank. i have no clue as to what this is. is the rock deseased???? im really woried about it.

 

[Thumper]

I cant say what it is but I had the same thing and my crabs munched it all down eventually. It's some kind of die off but no sure what it was. I wouldnt loose any sleep over it personally.

 

[foma2000]

i defenatly could be die off from the long trip in the mail to my house. ill chech out the crabs. what kind do you have?

 

[Thumper]

I have a couple Emerald and a few blue leg dwafs.

 

[BillyZ]

any time you get LR from mail order it is highly recomended that you go over it manualy and remove as much die-ff as possible and then cure it seperate from your display tank. anything black or "slimey" is quite likley a candidate for removal. one thing you can use to help you with cleaning is a bucket of fresh RO water and a turkey baster. Use the baster to blow strong streams of water at the rock. anything that peels off (or starts to) I would suggest removing, unless it is obvious it may be a recoverable hitchhiker you want to keep.

 

[foma2000]

so im using the rock to cycle the tank but should i take the rock out of my fuge and remove it?

 

[BillyZ]

No, I'm sorry. I don't know why, but I assumed you were adding this rock to an existing tank. My mistake.

if you're using the rock to cycle your tank you don't need to remove it, but I would still go over it and try and remove any large dead masses. If you're using it to cycle your tank, some die off is ok to leave on as it helps the cycle start.

Sorry for the confusion.

 

[foma2000]

so i took the rock out tonight to try and scrape off some dead stuff and it just turns out that this rock is discusting. most of the dead stuf is on one side of my big rock so i decided to take a hammer and just chissle off that part of the rock, when the rock broke in half, i find that the intire core of the rock is black. i dont know why but i was very aprehensive about putting it back in my tank. none the less i ended up putting it all back into the tank.

 

[BillyZ]

hmmm curious why the inside would be black. Did you happen to snap any pictures of it you could post?

 

[foma2000]

i dont have a digital camara but the middle is like charcol.