Tank Melted Down, restarting question!

[Spdu4ria]

hello all!

I am another unfortunated individual that lives in western washington, and had the extreme pleasure of having no power for 5 days which casued the demise of 2 very cultured tanks. I have decided to sell my larger tank(140Gal, see for sale section), but have decided to restart my 72 bow front tank. After the power was back on I broke down the tanks and sold my LR from my main tank to a LFS, but the rock that was in my 72 I just put in a large tub and set out on the deck. During the meltdown of the 72 gallon I had a very large infestation of worms. SO in an attempt to kill of any hitchhiker worms i left the rock on the deck for 5 days, in which it got fairly cold outside at night, near freezing. I have respun up my tank and have put the rock in, only after 2 seperate scub w/ fresh water sessions.

So i guess my question is, am I wasting my time with this rock? Will it come back and be able to sustain a healthly and strong reef system? The tank has been cycling for about a day and a half now, and my amnonia level is super high, and my nitrite hasn't started to move yet. My skimmer is pulling out some nasty crap also. I have been using seachem's "stability' to help the restart process.

Can i get your guys 2 cents!?

Thanks!

 

[aquaman3680]

I just moved my tank from califorina to kansas. The liverock was on a moving truck for about 10 days with just wet newspaper and my reef is doing awesome and i am starting to see coralline growth and copepods

Just my expirence

 

[ronj]

your rock is fine..alot of growth is just dying off...there is no telling how much life is still left in the crevices of that rock..tons of it...i wouldn't use the Stability though..i would just let it cycle out all of the dieoff for the next few weeks and you will be ready to go again!!!

 

[Spdu4ria]

keep the info coming! Thanks for the replies. you think that alot of stuff survived on the rock even though it was in freezing temps for like 5 days or so???

I guess im just worrying to much because my tank cycled in 2 days last time.

 

[aquarookie]

I am sure your rock will be fine, but if I were you I would buy a really nice piece of liverock to reseed yours since a lot of life has died off. I did that with my own rock which had been dead and dry for many months and it is doing great now.

 

[ronj]

as long as it wasn't dried out and bleached, there is life in it..even if there wasn't, like Aquarookie said, it would only take one peice of new liverock to re-seed all of yours..yours will be fine though

 

[Krish]

First off...Sorry to hear about your 2 tanks:doubt: It's a shame what happened to all of you guys up that way, but I think it is great you weren't discouraged and are giving it another shot

As for the live rock. If you like the pieces you have, then just let the tank cycle and it will re-populate itself with necessary bacteria needed for biological filtration and denitrification.. The fact that you are reading ammonia means that the cycling process has begun so just hang tight.