Adding additional dry rock to established tank?

[Blennyblonco]

Sry so long and if this has been asked/answered before. I saw a few similar post but where at a smaller scale . I am newer to this site and looking for advice. I have a 220g, 2.5yr old tank with about 200lbs of rock within. I had to get a fish out which required moving the rock and its look like garbage since. I was never really in love with the layout anyway. More importantly, I need to improve the flow! So, I want to take down and re-scape. What I'd like to do is break the existing rock and make more of a stucture rather than just stacking again. I made a few small stuctures when setting up so I know its a time consuming process. Especially for the larger scale structure/s im hoping to make.

My question is at amount of time I can have the rock out of the water so I'm not having to start from scratch with the cycling process. I still have my fish and corals which i would not be able to store elsewhere for that to happen.. My thought would be to remove 1 piece at a time, break up and put in to a bin of water with a power head/heater keeping the flow. The problem then becomes the amount of time it takes to create along with curing time of glue and mortar

I'm sure others have had to do this in the past so I'm looking for tips on what you may have done that made this successful.

Thank you all in advance!

 

[P-Dub]

I think your plan is solid with a pump and heater option. Make a plan, follow the plan, work efficiently.

 

[Zoa_Fanatic]

Long as rock stays decently wet you should be ok. Bacteria die quickly when exposed to open air and if you have bristle worms and things in there they’ll die creating ammonia when they rot. I’d just use your plan and create a scape by stacking if you can. I’ve never been a fan of gluing or mortaring anything personally. I’ve always just used angular rock and tied it all together. And trust me if it could fall it would’ve with my engineer goby. He was a small scale construction crew on his own.