live rock curing

[calgar]

I have a question i have 20kg of live rock just wandering around cause, my dad told me to take it out of his tank so he can rare gold fish, i now have my live rock in a tub with no salt water at all will it still be cured, and any chances i could make the curing process much faster, also if ur rock smells does it mean the curring process is not over?

[rkemp]

Hi Calgar,

Unfortunately a couple of things you have said indicate your live rock is not cured. First you would want to keep it in salt water. You can put live rock in RO/DI water if you want to kill off some of the critters (worms and such) that are living in it, but you only do RO/DI dip for a short amount of time. If you have the rock in tap water you will just be causing die off not preventing it. Speaking of die off it sounds like you still have some, the dead cultures on the rock really smell and pollute the water and are usually dark brown or black spots on the rock. Because of this you should keep the rock out of your tanks and be running a protein skimmer on the tub that has the rock in it. Alternatively you could do water changes on your live rock tub to help keep the water clean.

[geekdafied]

the smell doesnt mean anything, all liverock has an odor to it. If it smells like rotten eggs, then you can worry about it. I wrote an article here for 3reef in the 3reef article sections on curing liverock.