Reusing old live rock?

When i cycled the tank with these rocks after this process will it cause any spike ? Do i have ot reseed them with a small cup of sand? I am thinking of going barebottom on my restart of my tank and don't really want much sand in it.

 

No, it will not cause a spike. By the time you're done bleaching it, the rock will not have anything alive or dead on it so there will be nothing to decompose. You can reseed the rock with either a bit of sand or, if you're going barebottom, a small piece of live rock from a trusted source. Just examine the live rock carefully for pest anemones, algae, crabs, etc., before adding it to your tank.

 

wow thx for the info

 

Results

Ok, we followed the above advice with the following results:

Before: the live rock looked like this: Image of Live Rock, Last Day - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

The cleaning processes:

Going in the bucket: Image of Cleaning LR 1 - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Humm.... "is it soup yet ma?" Image of Cleaning LR 3 - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

We are done with the rinsing....Wow!! : Image of Clean Rock - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Time to start it up again:
Into a 30g tank: Image of Clean Live rock - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Sump setup for curing rock:

Top view: Image of Sump Rock-Prep 1 - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Side view: Image of Sump Rock-Prep 2 - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting​

Next steps: Need a couple of damsles and need to get that 125g setup....

 

Nicely done! I may be a weirdo but I love the look of nice white rock when I set up a tank. Anything else makes me nervous

PS. Only cycle with one yellow tailed blue damsel. If you get two, they could pair up and there's nothing worse than a mated pair of damsels for aggression...except maybe a mated pair of maroon clownfish

 

The story is on another thread on how this happened. I have around 100lbs of LR. Pretty much my established reef tank had a massive die off. I need to clean my LR it’s never dried out but there is dead polyp colonies, xenia and various other former reef life in it. How can I clean it to the point of reusing it? Does the Nuking process sterilize the rock will the coralline algae survive? Is there a better process? Should I manually clean the rock leave it in the dark to kill off the nuisance algae?


must make a point to read the whole thread:

 

Why not let the cycle take care of cleaning the rock? I did that with a bucket of rocks sitting in my basement for three years. The rocks were completely dry though. Instead of bleaching would the amonia(sp) spike kill everything. Just trying to understand why bleaching is necessary in this instance? Is it the instant gratification?

 

For us, the decision to move from a 75g to a 120g display tank gave me the opportunity to start over with my live rock.

Near the end of running the 75g, we picked up a very difficult macro algae, byosp(sp) I believe, and nothing would eat it and it spreads like crazy... did not want that macro algae in the new tank. So, for us, we had algae to kill...

 

aptaisia and some other pesky critters can live in unleaded gas and or ammonia filled water. There is no guarantee that all of this stuff is going to die during a cycle. This stuff will NOT live in freshwater and bleach and this is the reason for the bleach.

 

hi. i am new to this forum and to this hobby. i just got some live rock and i am thinking about bleaching it. how long would it take before the bleached rock became live again.i plan on seeding it with some small pieces of very well inspected live rock. i know this post is old so how is your bleached rock coming along?