Pics of the old 75G problems

Check this out to prepare for the new tank I decide to cook my LR. In the process of taking it out I mad two odd discoveries. I kinda knew both of these but I was surprised how bad it was.
Check out my sand bed glued to the base of the live rock.

More sandbed clumps up top but check out all the old dead snail shells in my tank. Considering that all of those snails rotted in my tank I have yet another cause for my algae problem. I guess you don't notice when you add a few more every couple weeks. Bad thing is this is only from half the tank!

 

Here's a bonus one check out how much was attached when I first moved it.

 

Why would you cook your LR. Does that not turn it into Base rock

J

 

Not cooking in the oven cooking, rock cooking as in dark curing. Basically you remove it from the tank. Swish it in a bucket to remove as much crap as possibly. Then recure it in the dark for 2 week to 2 months basically until it stops shedding detritus. Basically it kills off all the photo synthetic life in the first week or so. You don't add any food or light so the bacteria in the rock end up scavenging the detritus of the the rock. Burning off all the pent up crud in poorly kept rock. A reset button.

Basically it cost you your coraline but you get very clean biological active rock in the end.

It sounded appealing to me because there is a dozen odd algae species growing on my rock and I did want to target pick herbivore to constantly fight it in the new tank. The LR stays live I just get rid of a bunch of algae and detritus.

 

Damn Covey, no wonder that algea was thriving, all that detritus and rot. Good move on re-curing it. Your's was outta control, I think it was inevitable that you were gonna have to semi-restart. Good luck and post the progress.

 

I've cooked rock before for short periods and kept the majority of my coralline algae. However, if you have an algae problem, you will probably have to cook longer to get rid of the problem algae.

Here's a way to keep your coralline culture going. Before cooking, scrape a bunch of the coralline off your rock. Go to a drugstore and buy a pill crusher. The ones that work best has a dish and a top that screws into it. After crushing the coralline, drop into a ziplock bag of saltwater. Sink that bag in your tank while your rock is cooking (I alway put a couple holes near the top so the water doesn't get stale). When you are done cooking your rock and have reaquascaped, dump the spores in front of a powerhead or directly over the rocks. You will be surprised at how quickly the coralline re-establishes itself.

 

Coralline is never really gone. With high light, a calcium reactor, and Iodine dosing(Reef plus). My tank is lousy with coralline. I have 3 urchins I am not that attached to the coralline.