live rock question

[kylehustonvw]

I had about 40 lbs of live rock that was overtaken by green hair algae. While switching tanks I put the 40 lbs in a trashcan with filled with water and a heater. After about 2 months the algae never went away and I constantly did water changes. After going on vacation my power went off so it lost its heat for over 3 weeks and also it got replaced with pure ro water(no salt) Is there a way to restore this 40lbs of live rock??

 

[Faciosity]

Scrub off the dead algae if there is still any on it, give it a rinse, and keep it in salt water with a heater and a powerhead to cure it. Lack of light will keep the algae from growing again. It might also be beneficial to seed it with rock from a tank unless you want to do that part later on when you are ready to use it.

 

[kylehustonvw]

I just want to restore it so I can sell or donate it to another member. I dont have room in my current tank for it but I dont want to lose 40 lbs of rock that is sitting in fresh water with no heater. So if I just change the water to saltwater again and start heating it up it will be good again???

 

[NWDiver]

The rock is fine, but what Faciosity was trying to explain is that the rock is not really "live" until it is re-populated with organisms. You can do this by adding "seed" rock from a running system and adding heat and saltwater. Add light if you want coraline.
All the good life is dead on the rock you describe.

 

[jrgilles]

Yea, you have a bucket of dead rock

Do you have a power washer? Since it is all dead, you could powerwash the algae off, then it would be nice and clean. Then
put it back in salt water and add a few pieces of rock to start the bacteria back up, and keep it in the dark for a few weeks.

rob

 

[Faciosity]

Or if the plan is to get rid of it, just let it dry so the next person can start over with it. Then you will have what they call "dry base rock" rather than "live rock".

 

[kylehustonvw]

sweet, thanks for the info guys...there are a couple of good pieces I would like to keep for my tank so I definitely want to restore it. Generally how long should I leave it in the saltwater before I re seed it??

 

[mcdonaldjosh7]

I would personally say re-seed it right away after putting it in. As long as all the dead algae is off, you are good to start!

 

[Chichas01]

If it were me, I'd keep the rock. Add new salt water, keep it heated and run a skimmer on the container holding your rock. That will skimm off all the dead algea and the junk it releases. You can toss in a chunk of existing 'live' rock for seeding now and run light or not as previously suggested.

 

[Scooterman]

First off if you put it in a trash can and had it covered & it was dark enough it should of killed off the algae. If the rock is dead then you should just bleach it then treat it with a rinse and Amquel. Then at this point you have completely porous rock ready for reseeding. There is a process where you could even boil it outside a while then bleach it to get it even cleaner, it works really well and probably will one day be the best piece of rock you'll lever have. Otherwise you will continue to have algae on this rock if you try to reseed it now, it may take a few months to show up again but it will come back, when cooking rock you have to make sure it is completely void of light and it may take over three months to really kill it all off, which is why I prefer to bleach it and be done with it. I've had success with this process many times over, even our LFS does it now, just make sure the cleaning process is through when done before reseeding.

 

[jrgilles]

I've heard that boiling it can break some of the rocks as air pockets inside expand and pressurize. Not sure what truth there is to this.

A guy I work with had a really bad algae problem. He set up a new tank, but powerwashed the rocks in his driveway. Took all the algae right off (although I'd imagine powerwashing also could have broken off some pieces of the rock.)

 

[Scooterman]

lol Power washing can break up the rock and over boiling can also but boiling will kill it off power washing won't remove it completely and kill it, you may not see it but it is still there. Bleaching is the easiest way, faster and just as safe if done properly, just search the forums for the process, we have tons of information on it.