Cycling with uncured LR

[Anonymous]

Ok I got a huge batch of uncured Tonga Kailini from Dr Mac & Sons (90lbs) yesterday, it stank bad... I put it in the tank.. it still stinks a bit, but "luckily" its hot enough I can keep the windows open and try to blow the stink out. My question though is in the first 2 hours I put the LR in, the tank went from about .5 ammonia to 8+ (ie it hit the top of the scale).. now I know it'll take time to cycle, but I'm curious as to how much cleaning of the rock I need to do? Rip off anything squishy/gooey? Anything black?

The reason I'm asking this is because I know that there will be a point (hopefully) when there will be enough bacteria to take care of all the ammonia from decaying stuff, and I'm wondering if then I could put "cleaners" (snails,crabs,etc) in the tank to actually consume all the decaying stuff, or is this just not a logical option? There is some orange stuff that's not quite gooey, but its not hard either, its soft and plyable like peanut butter, and I dont know what it is so if its something that'll grow back I dont want to prematurely yank it off. That and not knowing ANYTHING about corals & the like I dont want to yank off some stuff I'll regret later ("ooh hey i ripped one of those off my uncured live rock and threw it away" "You WHAT! Thats a XXXXX frag they go for $100 in the store!")


Any advice?

 

[rwoolley]

You'll want to do some water changes as the LR cures, which should also help with the odor. Something like 2-3 times a week. I just lightly brushed off anything that was obviously dead and decaying just before a water change. I wouldn't leave something obviously dead in the tank.

 

[Anonymous]

Cycling and curing are two different things. You'll first be curing, may as well save as much life as you can during this process, so do the big w/c's to keep nitrogenous wastes down.

Sounds like you've got a sponge of some type growing there.

 

[Johnsteph10]

Unfortunately most of the time when sponges look "gooey" it is too late (as they have been exposed to air...). Just like the others have said, big water changes (2-3x/week) and brush off/siphon out was looks obviously dead. Keep doing this! It'll get better I promise...you can judge by the stink!
Don't put cleanup critters in there as they will quickly kick the bucket..

Patience, water changes, tests, and a strong nose are all that is needed.

John

 

[black9ice]

Grab a nylon brush and some tweezers and get to scrubbing and cleaning. I would recomend some fresh dish washing gloves to protect your hands. Go over every piece of rock. I filled 3 5 gal buckets half full and scrubbed and picked at 50lbs of Fiji. The stink alone will make you want to puke!

Try to get all the sponges (blackened parts of the rock). Then after you put it back in the tank, the next day I would do another huge water change. Get that ammonia down alot lower. I was changing 15 gal a day for a week on my 55 with 50lbs of uncured. 2 weeks later it is starting to come around, minus my hair and small cyno problems. I need a new RO/DI unit. I am just using RO now. I went through a whole 150 gal mix of salt for reference on this tank alone. I am now half way done with a Oceanic 90gal mix.

Keep doing water changes etc... I also helped the cycle along by using that bagged live sand from my LFS. The tank pretty much cycled in a week.

One more thing when doing water changes suck up that white slime on the rocks.

 

[Anonymous]

Well yesterday I did go to work on the rock with a toothbrush and exactoknife. Piece by piece, I tried to scrub off any loose black stuff, not to mention just scrubbing the entire surface in general. I did pry off some black stuff that was rubbery like roofing sealant and stuck to the rock which I assumed to be sponges. I also took off an orange looking sponge thing too, which wasn't black, but someone said air = death so remove anyways, and since the rocks didn't come in water I assumed it would die anyways, I really hope my thinking was right, I'd hate to think I pulled off a perfectly good sponge or softcoral or something that would survive because it had some moisture in it. Ironically it didn't stink terribly bad, the pieces that smelled the worst were the large ones that had the black dead sponges on it, that or I quickly got used to the stank

150 gallons of water changes to bring down the ammonia? yikes talk about the unseen cost of buying live rock that'd cost me $45 for salt alone! Besides I thought that if you do water changes during a cycle process (which is what's happening) you'll just prolong the cycle. There weren't many hithickers that I could see so dont see why a water change would really be needed (atleast not until the tank is established).

Anyways I took some pictures of the rocks if anyone is curious what a 90lbs box of uncured Tonga Kailini from Dr Mac & Sons gets ya.

http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~mbolling/tongalr.html

 

[kim]

Consider dosing with LIVE (repeat....LIVE) phyto in there.

Phyto love to eat ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.....they'll grow like crazy and help keep your levels down. Eventually they too will be eaten or skimmed out.....but they will help keep those nasty spikes down and hopefully minimise die-off, again reducing spikes.

Quite a few people here in the UK have documented and used this method for curing LR, and while it is something I have yet to do, it seems very successful, I know some of the folks who have used it and feel that I should bring it to your attention.

In some cases where there was some existing biological filtration, plus skimming, curing has been completed within a week, no water changes, no smells. And I don't think our rock is any fresher here !

Hth,

kim

(ps if you want to find out more, pop a question over at www.ultimatereef.net.....I hope it's okay to give a link to another community...)

 

[Anonymous]

Of course, for the phyto to survive the tank has to be illuminated brightly enough to probably create some serious algae problems. I think I would be inclined to just skim the crap out of it.

By the way, plenty of sponges do survive; maybe deep in the rock, and they will grow out later.

 

[Anonymous]

Don't expect "freebies" from LR either, unless you are glad to have aptasia!

 

[Anonymous]

Well I did get a free hermit crab! Big one too! (well bigger than the standard red/blue leg sized ones, a hair bigger than an astraea snail).

But yah I know this is uncured, shipped for who knows how many days, the only free stuff I was expecting was the stench. From what i understand I have some SPS coral skeletons and maybe some non-skeletons, but unless they survive the ammonia, I'll just have MORE skeletons.

Overall I'm happy with what I got, if I wanted freebe stuff I could of ordered from TBS, then would of paid a buttload more for it, in hindsight the money I save with this stuff ($2.75/lbs vs 5+/lbs TBS) I can buy my own life for it.

 

[Anonymous]

$2.75 is a great price, and as long as you are satisfied with the shapes and sizes, you've come out ahead!

The best part is eventually adding your choice of life anyway.

 

[kim]

Re the risks of algae.

I don't know of anybody who has suffered from algae as a result of using phyto (and therefore adding light) to their tank. And in case there is prejuduce, this is not a crazy new idea...it is several years old and fairly mainstream among the "bulletin board" groupies.

Back to algae....

The phyto will compete against these algae for nutrients. Phyto are pretty efficient !

Then, the phyto will "compete" for light. The tank will look like a phyto reactor. Pea soup.

The reason phyto survive in a phyto reactor, despite the fact that light penetration is so low, is that each, regularly, has his/her 10 seconds of light as he/she swirls about.

By eliminating nutrients early, before they are ad/absorbed into rock or sand, you are probably reducing the dangers of algae. By reducing die-off, you would be eliminating further release of nutrients.

So I don't (myself) buy the algae risk.

kim

 

[Anonymous]

Well yesterday I did go to work on the rock with a toothbrush and exactoknife. Piece by piece, I tried to scrub off any loose black stuff, not to mention just scrubbing the entire surface in general. I did pry off some black stuff that was rubbery like roofing sealant and stuck to the rock which I assumed to be sponges. I also took off an orange looking sponge thing too, which wasn't black, but someone said air = death so remove anyways, and since the rocks didn't come in water I assumed it would die anyways, I really hope my thinking was right, I'd hate to think I pulled off a perfectly good sponge or softcoral or something that would survive because it had some moisture in it. Ironically it didn't stink terribly bad, the pieces that smelled the worst were the large ones that had the black dead sponges on it, that or I quickly got used to the stank

150 gallons of water changes to bring down the ammonia? yikes talk about the unseen cost of buying live rock that'd cost me $45 for salt alone! Besides I thought that if you do water changes during a cycle process (which is what's happening) you'll just prolong the cycle. There weren't many hithickers that I could see so dont see why a water change would really be needed (atleast not until the tank is established).

Anyways I took some pictures of the rocks if anyone is curious what a 90lbs box of uncured Tonga Kailini from Dr Mac & Sons gets ya.

http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~mbolling/tongalr.html

Again, you're not cycling (that is the culturing or growing to larger numbers of nitrifying bacteria), you are curing (allowing the recovery of any/all life on/in live rock - i.e. that which makes it "live"). If you want to kill off all that makes good live rock good, then don't do the water changes. If you wish to have righteous live rock (which nothing else can replace), then you'll do those water changes understanding that it's just as important to that in situ life as it is to the corals and other life you purchased more specifically.

What you can't see is irrelevant - do a search on what's popped up in people's tanks after a few weeks or months. It's worth an entire chapter in a book (a book that's been written, btw; The Natural Marine Aquarium-Reef Invertebrates), which I can't hope to accomplish here. I'll just encourage to to learn the difference between curing and cycling, and embrace it. Also, search our library and past posts, as well as Advanced Aquarist for more information than you can shake a stick at.

 

[Anonymous]

I understand that I'm curing my live rock, but am I not also cycling at the same time? Its just I'm taking care of two birds with one stone (no pun) with the live rock. From what I've read cycling with live rock (ie also curing with it) works just as well as tossing in some dead shrimp or damsels. I understand that the ammonia is gonna wipe out lots of non-bacterial stuff on the live rock, and I am taking steps to lower it.

 

[Anonymous]

With good quality live rock (and my guess is that's what you've got), you already have nitrifyers. So, going on that assumption, what you want to do is preserve as much life as you can from that righteous stuff, not worry about culturing bacteria in situ. Once it's cured, then, if you wish to culture more bacteria, toss in a bit of raw shrimp (you're on track with that, but do make sure it's raw, just had someone do it w/cooked :| ), get that boost in ammonia and subesquents, and once you zero out on ammonia and nitrite you'll know you've cultured more of what you already have.

I always recommend cycling fishless, ESPECIALLY when the choice is damsels.

 

[Anonymous]

Alright, sounds good, I just got back from HD with a couple 32 gallon rubbermaids, I'll mix up a batch of salt and start dumping the rest out the window. Do you have any recommendation to how much water change I should do? Frequency wise? Just enough to keep the ammonia down to reasonable levels (less than 2ppm? 1ppm? .5ppm?)

 

[SDMike]

Grab a nylon brush and some tweezers and get to scrubbing and cleaning. I would recomend some fresh dish washing gloves to protect your hands. Go over every piece of rock. I filled 3 5 gal buckets half full and scrubbed and picked at 50lbs of Fiji. The stink alone will make you want to puke!

Try to get all the sponges (blackened parts of the rock). Then after you put it back in the tank, the next day I would do another huge water change. Get that ammonia down alot lower. I was changing 15 gal a day for a week on my 55 with 50lbs of uncured. 2 weeks later it is starting to come around, minus my hair and small cyno problems. I need a new RO/DI unit. I am just using RO now. I went through a whole 150 gal mix of salt for reference on this tank alone. I am now half way done with a Oceanic 90gal mix.

Keep doing water changes etc... I also helped the cycle along by using that bagged live sand from my LFS. The tank pretty much cycled in a week.

One more thing when doing water changes suck up that white slime on the rocks.

I bought a box of LR from Jeff's in LA. 66lb of uncured Kaelini rock went into my 29... Instant sewage! EVERYTHING that I had in the tank died. (thankfully, it was only a few snails and a few hermits, but still, I KILLED stuff by being stupid!)

I dealt with it for about a week, then said "screw this! I'm doing something different!"

Took the LR out of the tank and stuck it in Rubbermaid containers and a keg sized trashcan. Kept PHs in the buckets and as many heaters as I had at the time were rotated around. It took draining ALL the water at least once/day for about a week to make the stink go away. Its a good thing I'm single...

Every time I dumped the water out of the buckets/bins it was almost enough to gag me. Nasty, disgusting, stinky stuff! The last few pieces had some sponge on them that needed to get brushed off before they'd stop stinking.

Now everything's in the tank and looking good. I sold off several of the giant pieces, the rest are in the tank and the rubble went into the sumpfugium.

Living in San Diego, I'm blessed with instant access to filtered natural seawater. This made the 100% water changes almost painless. Thank God for an accident in geography! If this'd happened living in the DC area, I don't know what I'd have done.

Hope this tale of woe helps someone BEFORE they do something stupid.

Mike

 

[Anonymous]

Living in San Diego, I'm blessed with instant access to filtered natural seawater.

I'm curious how do you have filtered seawater? Straight from the ocean? I'd think anything within a hundred miles of LA would be polluted.

 

[Anonymous]

Alright, sounds good, I just got back from HD with a couple 32 gallon rubbermaids, I'll mix up a batch of salt and start dumping the rest out the window. Do you have any recommendation to how much water change I should do? Frequency wise? Just enough to keep the ammonia down to reasonable levels (less than 2ppm? 1ppm? .5ppm?)

Well, the lower the better. Have you got a skimmer? If so, USE IT, for sure. Sometimes, especially without skimming, dailies may be necessary.

 

[Anonymous]

Well, the lower the better. Have you got a skimmer? If so, USE IT, for sure. Sometimes, especially without skimming, dailies may be necessary.

Yah took my skimmer from the other tank until I build my super bon... er skimmer from PVC, unfortunately the skimmer is "maxed" for 30 gallon tanks so I'm changing the collection cup every few hours, but I think the fact it is foaming over quite regularlly means its doing something.

After one water change last night (about 28 gallons worth) the ammonia went from 8+ to... 8+.. so either the water was ammonia saturated in which case doing a water change basically did nothing except give me more clean water to saturate, or it was a lot higher than 8, but the test doesn't show any different (darker) colors beyond 8.0ppm. In any case this morning it looked a hair lighter (the ammonia test) although I would still say 8.0, I have 30 gallons of water ready for another change today, as soon as people go to work so I can squirt the excess out my 2nd story window again without any complaints