Fumes from boiling rock

[Krish]

Thought this may be helpful to others as well as I wanted to hear some feedback on it, but I've been told by a few that throwing live rock into a pot of water to boil (to basically kill off everything) should be done outdoors or in a very heavily ventilated area because the fumes it gives off shouldn't be inhaled. Anyone ever heard anything like that before that they can share some info on?

 

[DonW]

Thought this may be helpful to others as well as I wanted to hear some feedback on it, but I've been told by a few that throwing live rock into a pot of water to boil (to basically kill off everything) should be done outdoors or in a very heavily ventilated area because the fumes it gives off shouldn't be inhaled. Anyone ever heard anything like that before that they can share some info on?

Krish boiling is not the same as burning. Thats the easies way I can think of to put it. If you put it in a oven then that may be toxic but boiling is mostly just water.

Don

 

[Krish]

Krish boiling is not the same as burning. Thats the easies way I can think of to put it. If you put it in a oven then that may be toxic but boiling is mostly just water.

Don

That's basically what I was thinking, but was told a bit differently...

 

[Curtswearing]

You don't believe me??? Gettin' awful big for your britches now that your a mod now, huh??? LOL!!!

I don't know this to be fact. In fact, even Eric Borneman doesn't know this to be fact but I've always erred on the side of caution because of this post. http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=60786&postcount=13

Be careful boiling rocks. I got an email from a physician that was treating a patient who had a severe reaction after boiling coral skeletons and associated rock - not sure what wound up being aerosolized, but the person almost died. It was weird, and who knows what might else have been invovled.

Eric even states that "Who knows what else might have been involved". For all we know, it wasn't the LR boiling at all. Again, this might not be a danger at all but my attitude is, "Why take the chance". I've already tried to kill myself this year by falling off of decks. :eek2:

 

[Krish]

You don't believe me??? Gettin' awful big for your britches now that your a mod now, huh???

ROFL!!! Yeah man...:lol:

Thanks for the reply Curt! Better safe than sorry huh? My main reason for wanting to know was because I'm going to boil all that lobophora off of my rocks I have out back so I can re-use them without worrying about it coming back. I keep chopping up the rock trying to get rid of it and when I think I got it all, I see another spot pop up! So, that's my plan...Don't want to poison the baby and also, may be helpful to someone else

 

[Curtswearing]

Gotcha....A single Lobophora holdfast is all that you need to miss while scrubbing or chipping for a whole patch to grow back over time. It's the same way for most Caulerpas and several other macroalgaes.

If the rock shapes are good, I see no problem with 'nuking' the rock and letting bacterial colonies, coralline, polychaetes, etc. repopulate the brand new rock.

 

[Krish]

Gotcha....A single Lobophora holdfast is all that you need to miss while scrubbing or chipping for a whole patch to grow back over time. It's the same way for most Caulerpas and several other macroalgaes.

If the rock shapes are good, I see no problem with 'nuking' the rock and letting bacterial colonies, coralline, polychaetes, etc. repopulate the brand new rock.

That's my plan...I want to make it nice white base rock and seed it with the others in my aquapod that don't have any lobophora on it. Hope to get rid of this problem I have been dealing with from the beginning of the year

 

[IAP Brian]

***********HIJACK********

Man I get busy and don't pay attention to RF for a bit and the next thing ya know Krish is a Mod! ...I guess Chuck and Mike figured since you can't shut Krish up and he keep's breaking everything, might as well give him the power to fix some of it! :lol: -congrats Krish

As far as boiling rock, I have not been desperate enough in a long time (15 or so years) to resort to boiling. I do remember my hair algae tank from hell and I boiled 75 lbs of rock in batches (biggest pot I could find was 5 gal) in my studio apartment. Other then the place smelling like a tidal mud flat for a couple days, nothing happened to me health wise. I guess if you can boil it in the garage with the door open or outside that would be better. At least the house will smell better (and any one with a spousal unit may avoid the couch for a couple days :lol: )

 

[MikeS]

I'd recommend boiling it outside...there could be nasties in the rock that could aerosol out while boiling, I've heard the horror stories as well...better safe than sorry IMO...and also, as pointed out above, why stink up the house if you can do it outside? Krish, you live in the Bahama's...it's not like you are going to get snowed on or anything like that...:lol: And if you don't already have one, it's a great excuse to go buy a turkey fryer....ummm...fried turkey, it's the only way to eat it...

IMO one of the best reasons to boil live rock is that it strips a lot of nutrients, biofilms, ect out of the rock...tons of crud comes out of the LR when you boil it, and that means that crud isn't going into your tank. Don't boil all of it, save some raw so you can re-seed the boiled LR when you cure it or place it in the tank...

I've done it before, it greatly reduces the amount of shed from the LR in the tank, which IMO is advantageous no matter what kind of setup you have, BB, DSB, ect...I think we all agree that the lower the amount of nutrients introduced initially into the system, the better....

MikeS

 

[Scooterman]

Heck all this time Mo-Jo said hey don't boil it in your house & that was good enough for me
I would think maybe that like anything in life it would only take one piece of rock to have some nasty in it that would give off poisonous fumes, maybe not all rock but a few. Unless your from Louisiana, we boil everything & eat it, so that would throw a bone in your stew

 

[Krish]

ROFL! You guys are a trip! Yeah Brian I am a mod of the "New to Reefkeeping forum" Very cool...

Yeah, I will fire up the grill tomorrow and put a pot on one of the burners and let her rip! See if I can get some rock that I can use. Thanks again

 

[sausage fingers]

Hi,

I was at my lfs yesterday with her indoors looking at live rock being cured i picked some up and had a good sniff better than smelling salts and worse than rotten eggs, maybe thats what they meant about boiling rock if you bought that smell in your house youll have the wife to deal with. LOL

 

[Krish]

LOL! She'd definately kill me I accidentally didn't get all the water out of my chiller when I took it down and a week later when I went to move it and some water came out.... Rotton egg!!!:lol:

 

[spongebob lover]

ohh boy dood i didn't know you wanted to have boiled rock for dinner :lol: .

yeah definetly boil it outside and don't let the baby smell that stuff because it's bad for babies.

Now why don't you just cure the rock dood??? i mean i know it'd take weeks but hey what's the rush .
Anyways, be careful with what you do.

 

[Krish]

LOL! I'm not trying to cure the rock...It's already cured. I'm trying to kill the rock totally and everything that's on/in it. That lobophora doesn't disappear from just sitting in the dark etc. I've chopped the stuff off before and it still came back so I want to boil it off

 

[spongebob lover]

I'm trying to kill the rock totally

well in that case you chop it all in little pieces and glue it back together :lol:

 

[burning2nd]

i tend to think that anything with the word "fumes"

isnt good to inhale.

you can get smoke
gas
but then listen to this
fumes

"i had fumes in my lungs"
"i had smoke in my lungs"

LOL

anyway hes trying to Uncure the rock now.

 

[Krish]

It's cooked now

 

[shallowreef]

the only reason i can imagine to do it outside is because the smell of boiling saltwater would more than likely smell fishy and make you house smell like a whore house in mid july.

 

[Little Luey]

Please explain why would you want to kill your live rock?