Cooking live rocks

[jasony816]

Whats the difference between "Cooking" live rocks in buckets or tank with no light and actually cooking the rock in water near boiling for a few 5-10 minutes? Any pros and cons for each as I am in the process of upgrading from a 55 gal to a 75 gal and have some hair algae problems and recently noticed that I have a few aiptasia growing.

The new 75 gal will not be placed in the same area as the 55 gal and I have livestock in my 55 consisting of fish, sps, and zoas. I am not sure of which approach to go with and kind of nervous about the upgrade as I dont want to lose anything.

Jason

 

[prattreef]

The point of "cooking" live rock ( I hate that term) is to allow bacterial processes within the rock itself time to cycle out and literally push the phosphate and other accumulated waste out of the rock. Boiling the rock is a pretty drastic way of killing stuff on it you don't want as well as killing stuff you do want.

 

[jrobbins]

just to follow up on randy, "cooking" in a bucket with no light will actually remove the organic materials from the rock. it will actually get pushed out of the pores of the live rock. pretty disgusting and stinky.

cooking as in boiling the crap out of the rock will kill most everything too, but you will still face a lenghty cure time as all the dead organic stuff gets broken down and removed from the rock.

 

[jasony816]

Thanks Randy oh yeah the frags are doing very well, the red cap is like twice the size now but its only growing horizontally. I guess I shouldn't boil the my established live rock then just to get rid of the algae and aiptasia and just cook it in the new 75 w/o sand until its all gone, will that also kill the aiptasia and any other nasties? Another question, if I do all the rocks at once I wont have any rocks in the old 55 where all my livestock is, will that affect them as the old rock is cooking in the new 75?

 

[jrobbins]

cooking and curing are different and i dont think you can cook it in the tank...you need total darkness. even if you could cook it in the 75, do you really want to live with the smell for months?

If you really want to go that route and cook it, i have a 30 gallon rubbermaid you can borrow.

 

[jasony816]

Its not new live rock its rock that was already in my 55 that is already cured and established. I would still get that smell just by turning off the lights? I am just trying to find a best approach to moving to a 75 and in the meantime trying to get out all the algae and aiptasia. I know cooking with lights off will most certainly kill off all the algae but im not sure that it will take care of the aiptasia? Or does anyone recommending I just boil the rock making it dead or just purchase new dead rock and start new?

 

[jrobbins]

cooking is a way to "rejuvenate" live rock. pushing out all the crap that is clogging up the pores of the rock and making it a nutrient trap. it will also completely kill any sort of life that is on or in the rock.

if you just turn off the lights, you will cause your rock to recycle in your tank as all the photosynthetic stuff dies, and yes it will probably stink as all the organic matter dies and decays. it will probably kill the aptasia if you leave the lights out long enough, but i wouldn't guarantee it. on the other hand, you will probably not kill off all the critters that are non-photosynthetic.

anyway, what kind of algae do you want to kill and how bad is the aptasia problem? these are both nutrient related issues, so even if you bleached the rock, you will probably face this problem again in the future unless you figure out why you are having high nutrients in the water.

as for teh aptasia, have you tried joes juice or some kalk paste? it will be a lot easier than cooking or recuring the rock.

 

[jrobbins]

here is a thread on cooking rocks. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=437342

 

[jasony816]

any other recommendations as to what to do upgrading from a 55 to 75? i have rocks with some algae problem due to using tap water from the start before switching to ro/di and just noticed that i have aiptasia and i want to get rid of them before putting them in the tank. do anybody think i should not worry about all this cooking and just transfer the rock over and worry about the nutrient and let it go away on its own?

 

[jrobbins]

joes juice, a toothbrush, and a couple of waterchanges...

 

[henrystyle]

I recently broke down my 90 gallon freshwater tank. I took the rocks out of there and Im going to reuse them in my new reef setup....
I put the rocks in a rubbermaid bin, filled it with tap water and added some bleach. The rocks were covered with green algae and crap. The next day the rocks looked just like when I first bought them. CLEAN! My question is what should be my next step to get the rocks ready to go into my new reef setup?
I was planning on rinsing them good then letting them sit in saltwater with a heater and powerhead going... Should I cover the rubbermaid while doing this??
Really concerned about getting the phosphates out of the rock. I have coraline covered live rock from my 30 gallon reef that I can seed this freshwater rock with...
Let me know what you think I should do.......

 

[sjsoto]

if you just want to get rid of the algae and aiptasia, what i would do be to put rocks in buckets, no powerhead and close with cover, and let it seat for at least a month.
this has worked for me but like mentioned earlier it will kill just about everything in rocks..

if you decide to do this process in your tank in order to remove phosphates, you will have to do an enormouss water change to actually remove phosphate that has been released into water (i think)...

you said now your using ro/di water but algae is still present, then its your parameters that need to be fixed, which might also be the problem for your aiptasia

 

[Awibrandy]

This is what I did approximately 3 years ago.

I took all of my lr out of the tank placed them in bins with ph, heater, and skimmer. I then got a few 5 gallon buckets filled 1 with tank water, and the rest with fresh water prepared ro/di water matching the pars of the tank water. I took a brush to every single rock removing all of the nasty algea that had been growing on them for years (yes, due to tap water), and rinsing in every bucket as I went along. I then returned all the rock to the bins where they sat for 21days while we were able to set up the new tank.
I just recently saw a tiny bit of algea begining to rear it's ugly head. I belief the reason for that is that all crabs were removed for some treatment I had to do to the tank coupled with my increasing the food to the animals. Added a few tini hermits, and they are taking care of it.

Hope that helps!

 

[jasony816]

im still not sure what i should do as i might just move the rocks over and just live with it and keep the po4 and no3 down with the po4 reactor and keep feeding down.

 

[Keith P]

Cooking (in the dark, not with heat) will eliminate the algae. I wouldn't count on it 100% eradicating pests (if that is a concern).

From what I have been told, phosphates can take quite a while to completely leech out of the rock.

Using an acid is a sure fire way to remove them (We discussed it recently here: http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/general-discussion/67391-reusing-dead-lr.html)

 

[jasony816]

what would you do if lets say i want to eradicate the pest as well?

 

[sjsoto]

what would you do if lets say i want to eradicate the pest as well?

put rocks in buckets with no water and let them dry, leave in buckets without any water for about a month at least...

 

[jasony816]

Im torm between what to do as I already have the 75 in the house with no water in it yet and deciding if I should just do a transfer and not worry about cooking the rocks and just deal with the pest or spot treat them whenever possible as my rocks are already established and I would say matured as its been 1 year already and the rocks itself I got from someone that had them for atleast 7+ years. I mean I guess im just rushing as a empty 75 in the house is an eye sore if you know what i mean.

 

[Keith P]

Im torm between what to do as I already have the 75 in the house with no water in it yet and deciding if I should just do a transfer and not worry about cooking the rocks and just deal with the pest or spot treat them whenever possible as my rocks are already established and I would say matured as its been 1 year already and the rocks itself I got from someone that had them for atleast 7+ years. I mean I guess im just rushing as a empty 75 in the house is an eye sore if you know what i mean.

You can't rush a Reef system.

In my opinion, if you don't QT new additions, you're going to get aiptasia anyways. Do your best to remove as many as possible.

If you already have algae problems, your rock is still leeching nutrients (nitrates and/or phosphates). Cooking your rock would be time well spent.

 

[jasony816]

I think I will cook the rocks in buckets and in batches then put it in the 75 and try to get rid of the aiptasia with Joes Juice or something like that instead of boiling the rock and killing everything and practically starting over but I will see what happens because I will decide by this weeks end as I will start the process.