Live rock internal rotting

[Joe DeSantis]

A friend of mine has a 150 with about 100 lbs of live rock in it. It seems as if his rock, which is Florida aquacultured rock is dying from the inside out. It seems as if there are holes in it which appear to be getting larger and larger slowly. You can siphon a lot of dust out of these holes and the tank seems to have an unusually strong odor despite the continual use of fresh carbon and chemi-clean by Boyd industries. It is stocked minimally with a yellow tang, hawkfish, powder blue tang, and a few corals including frogspawn, lobophylia, and other fairly hardy species. There are also a number of blue and red legged hermit crabs, snails, starfish and hitchiker crabs.

Last summer the temp in the tank reached about 85-90 degrees and stayed that way for about a week due to an air-conditiong failure.
My question is: Could the temp increase have killed the life in the core of the rock releasing what he is siphoning off and creating the holes?

The rocks are huge, basketball size , and it seems to be isolated to the Florida aquaculture rock. The rest of the rock seems to be some sort of lace rock which has slowly gained enough corraline to look like live rock(these are not a concern).

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks in advance

 

[danmhippo]

If there are not much corals on it, would he be interested in taking the rock out and give it good strong blast with powerheads? Hopefully that will get all the gunks out of the rocks.

I do not know about acceptable temp range for the bacteria, but if he is flushing out detritus, it's not dead bacteria he is looking at.

 

[Jrsydevi1]

You say the temp spike occurred last summer.. when did this LR problem start?

Also.. how long ago did he introduce this Florida rock?

 

[Joe DeSantis]

It has been a slow ongoing process. It has caught my attention lately because i had not seen the tank for a while and I noticed the holes. he siphoned the gunk out of the holes and told me that he does the siphoning often with similar results. I may have him pull out the rock and blast it with a mag 9.5 that i use for maintenance purposes. Thanks for the idea Any others would be appreciated!

 

[NaH2Ofreak]

I know that the Florida liverock that I have, has a lot of empty barnicle (I think) holes in it. Quite a few of these barnicles were alive when I first got the rock but died out over time. I also know that these empty barnacle shells (holes) collect a TON of debris. Is it possible that this is what is going on. If so....I would say to just keep "turkey basting" the rock.

Dennis

 

[sschafer]

Sounds like dead sponges to me. When alive they can hold bits of rock in place and be almost indistinguishable from the rest of the rock. When decaying they start to smell very bad and slowls start the flake off the rock. This could easily look like holes growing in the rock.

-Steve

 

[wade1]

I think you've all missed the most likely and probable cause... (unless I misread)

There are worms and sponges that specialize in boring into the rock. Its normal in rock from all locations and expected. Given a few years, most rock is much more porous than it was when you recieved it. If you take almost any chunk of rock our of your tanks and crush it, you'll notice sponge, or black deposition and holes poking through the rock.

So, I think what you are seeing is a normal process and its just more detrimental in the short-run for the aquacultured rock (which is likely a less well packed limestone). The dust is just the rock debris from the boring beasties. (is that a pun?)

Nothing can be done for it really...

Wade

 

[Anonymous]

I agree wholeheartedly with wade on this one. Boring clams and the such.

 

[sschafer]

How would this explain the odor?

I agree wholeheartedly with wade on this one. Boring clams and the such.