adding dead rocks into my tank?

I want to add some dead rock from Reefcleaners and take out one of the big chunk of rock I currently have. I bought it because it was cheap, and it was a river rock though, but told me it would work.

Conclusion: it works fine, it looks beautiful, but it looks like fresh water aquarium lol, 70% of my tank is river rock actually. But from LFS all the dry rocks were 5-7 dollar per pound, so I was like w.e I will just be happy with this.
UNTILL I saw the reef cleaner florida dry rocks for 2.25 dollar per pound, and thats really cheap! In my experince anyway.

So I wanted to use this time, to make my tank look more oceanish feeling, and get rid of all the river rocks Im using right now. But I know if I do it all of sudden it can really screw up my biological system, and go through another cycle.

So in this type of case whats the best way to go? Even though 70% of the rocks are river rocks, Im planning on only taking out 30% and use the rest as base rocks for my florida dry rocks. So what should I do?

 

rinse the dry rock and put it in your tank. thats it.

 

so take out the current rock I dont want, and just put in the new florida dry rock?

 

you are not removing all the rock. and dry rock does not have to cure.

 

alright thanks

 

If you where putting in live rock then it would be a diffrent story. Just rinse of the dirt and debris and you can put it in your tank.

 

People seem to be missing the point. Mkizla has rocks already in there and wants them out of the tank because they make the tank look like a freshwater tank. Mkizla, I would not remove any rocks from the tank until the rock is considered live, which takes about 8-10 weeks. When dry rock is maricultured into live rock, they generally leave it in the ocean for a couple of years, so 8-10 weeks is a bargain.

I wonder what sort of rocks you have, and what sort of biological load they're able to carry. Are they porous? Is there a chance there is bacteria inside or is are they just round stones? There must be bacteria on them, but I'm just wondering how much of the biological filter in your tank is the rocks.

Keep in mind it takes a while for dry rock to become live rock. Somewhere around 8-10 weeks. And even if the rock in your tank isn't ideal, it still has beneficial bacteria on it. Anyway, the two ideas that come to my mind are:

You could use the same process as curing live rock (just search Google, you'll find several excellent guides) in a seperate tank/garbage can with the dry rock, but using a "seed" rock. One from your current aquarium should work fine, but you might want to go buy a small piece of live rock rubble from the store so that you get the chance for your rocks to get other beneficial things. You may need to introduce a little waste (fish food, seafood, something) into the tank to kick start the nitrogen cycle as the dry rock will have nothing for the bacteria to eat. The benefit of this is that you can just swap your rocks out for each other. The bad part of this is the extra setup and space required.

You could also put all the dry rock you get into your tank, wait 8-10 weeks, and then over the course of a month or so remove the river rock you river rock piece by piece. The benefit of this is that, well, it's easy. The bad part is that your tank might look a bit too rocky in the meanwhile. Again, buying a piece of (already cured!) live rock rubble from the LFS and adding it to the tank for this can't hurt and may help your dry rock gain some other beneficial things that wouldn't have come with the river rocks.

I would probably do the second suggestion. Why make the extra setup if you don't have to?

 

who is people? as I am the only person that replied..why make it so complicated for a newbie? wheather the river rock is colonizing bacteria or not he can still put the dry rock in his tank ...and he wants the river rock out. He doesnt have to wait 10 weeks to let rock cure that he is taking out of his tank anyway. If he takes some out they he has seed rock.

 

He has to wait if he has fish and critters in there already. You can't take out your biological filter (established rock) and put in rock without any and expect it your parameters to stay in check. There won't be anything to process the waste.

I've heard recent complaints of dry rock stinking up a storm. I actually would put it in a container to see what it was going to do. But I would definitely put the new rock in first to get established before removing any.

I would get all that river rock out over time.

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Sent from Tapatalk, so please forgive grammar and spelling

 

I never told him to take out his Live rock.I told him he could place the base rock in his tank once he cleaned it off debris...and he probably doesnt have room in his tank to keep 100% of both dry and live in. He stated as you stated he wanted to remove it overtime and if this rock isnt cured he should be able to remove some of it at a time.