Keeping live rock live

[Dmitry]

Pretty soon I'll be transferring the contents of my 29G into a 72G. (There will be a thread about the best way to do that as the time approaches!) In the meantime I want to start acquiring live rock for the new tank. I have time to walk around and grab pieces I like. What's the best way to keep them live until the new tank is in place? Just a bucket with saltwater? What??

 

[marrone]

When I'm curing LR I just place it in a bucket and place a power head in to turn over the water, I make sure there it good water movement at the surface. After a week or so, depending on how the rock is, I take the rocks out and rise them and replace some of the water. I do this until the rocks and water don't have any bad smell.

 

[jhale]

get some 20 gallon bins make up RO/DI water and mix your salt of choice. let it age a couple of days then you have a container that will hold rock forever. depending on how much rock is in there put in some powerheads. the more flow the better, don't skimp out on this. if you can get an airstone powered protein skimmer that would help as well. make sure the water does not get too hot as well, in the summer this could be hard, unless you can run your a/c all the time. depending what's on the rock you might need some lights as well.

 

[Dmitry]

I'm not curing these rocks. I'm buying them cured and just want to keep them cured until the tank is ready.

 

[marrone]

It's still the same way. Since your going to keep it in a bucket your going to have some die off anyway.

Also if your getting them from a LFS mostly they need to be cure again, unless they had it for quite a while.

 

[Dmitry]

In the stores they actually have the rocks in tanks with some inverts, so I'm pretty sure these rocks are cured! Now, if I order some rocks from Phishy Business (which I'm seriously considering), then I'd definitely need some additional curing. On the other hand, I might finish the job off in the main tank once it's set up. It'll help cycle it to boot. I just don't want serious deterioration of the rocks until that happens! Thanks for your advice!

 

[glipper69]

you are better off just buying uncured rock-(it's cheaper) since you have the time to cure it anyway, save yourself some money.

cure and keep alive as they stated above an dmake sure you use RO/DI water otherwise your rock will get saturated with Phosphates and when you add it to your tank you will have a severe hair algae problem.

good luck,
Frank

[ July 14, 2005, 02:22 AM: Message edited by: glipper69 ]

 

[Dmitry]

Hmm.... I'm very unenthusiastic about curing rock myself from scratch. I did that with the rocks I have now and it was a major PITA! I just don't have the time and the will to scrub it off all the time and clean the bucket. You know? Of course, if I order cured rock on-line I'd have to do some curing from the shipping, but I'm hoping it's not too much! Decisions, decision.

 

[glipper69]

you dont have to scrub anything, just put in water for about 2 weeks when it's done jsut rinse it in the same water just to get the excess dust off.

FRank