Curing Liverock

[KillBill75]

Hello All,
A Friend of mine gave me 30 lbs. of Fiji from a tank he tore down. He kept it in a Rubermaid box and did bi-weekly water changes for two monthes, but no protien skimming.I now have it and have been doing water changes using ocean water from my local beach (Westport) every week. How do I now determine when it is safe to add it to my tank?

[KillBill75]

Allset VOID THREAD

[Chuck S]

Okay just watch using local seawater whereever you are. The problem with local seawater in most cases is you can only collect it by the shore etc. This runs the risk of adding contaminents etc into your tank as well as high nitrates and other parasites.

It is best if any fresh seawater is used to collect it miles from shore since inshore thats where the waste and contaminents are. You then need to let it sit and let any harmful organisms to setting to the bottom etc and siphon off and use the topwater.

[cheerncougar]

To check the liverock to make sure it is cured check the water for NH4, NO2, and NO3 when the NH4 and NO2 reach zero that is the end of the cycle

[ClownMan]

Also, you can tell (somewhat) by the smell (lift it out of the tank to smell it). Does it smell very foul, nasty like waste water? If it does, then it needs to be cured some more. Good live rock should have an okay smell to it, not a nasty foul smell. The foul smell is all the dead material still on the rock, which needs to be rinsed off and cured for more time (with additional water changes).

I learned this because I had to cure some fresh live rock that just came in from Fiji. It was definetly foul smelling compared to the cured stuff. There was no mistaking that smell /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Once it was cured for a couple of weeks, it didn't smell any more.

Just my $.02 worth...