Bleach Curing Rock

HawaiianReef · Apr 29, 2019

I'm going to be curing some old, dried out live rock for about 3-4 weeks.
How do you guys move the water around while the rock is soaking?
Do you use pumps constantly running?
I was thinking of stirring the water up from time to time, maybe once a week.
And is it even necessary to move the water around during this?

David

MTBake · Apr 29, 2019

I run a pump and usually a heater when curing rock. I keep the water moving at all times.

jschultzbass · Apr 29, 2019

During the bleaching phase it's not necessary to move the water around. If you plan on curing it outside the tank then you'll want to use a powerhead and heater.

PatW · Apr 29, 2019

I just soak the rock in dilute bleach over night to remove organics. Then I rinse it and hose it off. If I am feeling ambitious, I scrub it. If it looks pretty clean, I figure the job is done. If not, I repeat the dilute bleach soak over night. It really does not seem to need mixing.

You can continue curing. Old rock can have phosphates bound to it. For the berserk approach, add rock to water with dilute muriatic acid. It does not take much. Muriatic acid which is HCl plus CaCO4 (rock) goes to H2O + CO2 + CaCl. This process will remove a thin layer of rock and hopefully all of the phosphates. It destroys some rock in the process so you want to be light with the acid. By the way, handle acid in a well ventilated space like out doors. Don’t breathe the fumes. And add acid to water and not water to acid.

A more sane approach is step three. Dump the rock into saltwater with a power head for a week or two. Check for phosphates. If 0, they are not a problem, if elevated, you can dump out the water, replace and repeat.

George81 · Apr 29, 2019

I bleached my old dry rock that was sitting in my parents basement for 12 years. I forget the exact concentration of bleach I used, you can find it on these forums I think. But I let it soak for a 2 weeks, then I air dried them with a fan for a week.
I used Rubbermaid roughneck garbage bins. I use them for water storage now.
After that I soaked them in RODI water and added Seachem prime until I couldn’t smell the bleach anymore, I think that was about a week or two.
Air dry again for a week with a fan blowing on them.
Brs has a video on how to do it.

HawaiianReef · Apr 29, 2019

I usually use the natural method of just using a heater and power head in saltwater in a container without light. I let it sit for around 3-4 months. But I'm wanting to get this up quicker, like mid June- July.
I watched the BRS video, the one in the 52 weeks of reefing. But they don't mention anything about adding a heater or pump. I'm worried about having an electrical device in the enclosed container that is gassing off combustible fumes.
I did consider doing muratic acid also, before the bleach, but I don't want to lose too much material of the rock. They mention that as well in the same BRS video. It was 25 percent loss of rock in a 1 to 5 solution ratio (2 gal. acid to 10 gal. water) for just 15 minutes. A 1 to 10 ratio was half the rock loss of 12.5 percent. Still more than I want lose.

HawaiianReef · Apr 29, 2019

George81 said:
I bleached my old dry rock that was sitting in my parents basement for 12 years. I forget the exact concentration of bleach I used, you can find it on these forums I think. But I let it soak for a 2 weeks, then I air dried them with a fan for a week.
I used Rubbermaid roughneck garbage bins. I use them for water storage now.
After that I soaked them in RODI water and added Seachem prime until I couldn’t smell the bleach anymore, I think that was about a week or two.
Air dry again for a week with a fan blowing on them.
Brs has a video on how to do it.

This is what Im planning to do, right down to using prime. Did you need to circulate the bleach water at all diring your 2 weeks of curing?

cracker · Apr 29, 2019

Thank You @PatW . You nail it.No need for bleach , just soak the rock in new saltwater A power head to move water around . No need for a heater. wait a couple weeks & test for nutrients. Ya don't want to use rock loaded up with a bunch of nutrients ! If your in a hurry, All being said, it's up to You .

George81 · Apr 29, 2019

Yes I used some old tunze 6060s but I’m sure any powerhead will do. No heater. I cycled the rock in the display tank. I also used the powerhead when I was soaking in RODI water. The biggest thing is to make sure the bleach is out of the rock and your nose is the best indicator. I also added lots of prime like 6 times the regular dose. The prime smells, I remember thinking why hasn’t the smell gone away yet and kept dosing prime until I realized it was the prime giving off the smell and just left it alone. The smell went away and the rocks didn’t have any distinguishable scent when they were done.

I never did the acid bath because I had nowhere to do it. It was freezing cold here so outside wasn’t an option.

That’s also why I used a fan to air dry the rock. I turned them every day or so to make sure all surfaces were dry. I did roughly 150-180lbs.

Sippiku · Apr 29, 2019

I'm bleaching some rock right now.
No need to have water movement, just let it sit for a week or two.
Check out the BRS video on Youtube!

HawaiianReef · Apr 29, 2019

cracker said:
Thank You @PatW . You nail it.No need for bleach , just soak the rock in new saltwater A power head to move water around . No need for a heater. wait a couple weeks & test for nutrients. Ya don't want to use rock loaded up with a bunch of nutrients ! If your in a hurry, All being said, it's up to You .

I do prefer this way. Just because it's so easy and fool-proof. But I like to go months when I do it this way. Even after about 4 months, I get some algae blooms in the first year or so. Could be a number of reasons other than the rock though.

This time I'm going to give the bleach method a try.

HawaiianReef · Apr 29, 2019

I tried an interesting approach.

I saw a guy on youtube use vinegar as an acid instead of going the muratic acid way. It makes sense. Muratic acid is just used to dissolve the surfaces of the rock to remove the organics, not kill them. And vinegar dissolves calcium.
I threw some old rock in a bin with about 20g of tap water. Added about 3/4 of a gal. of vinegar. This was a really light concentration, so I left it soaking (with heater and a couple power heads) for about 3-4 weeks. I actually forgot about it.
Today I just emptied out the water. There was all kinds of things pouring out with the water. My guess was organics that got released. The water had that same sulfur smell like when you cure rock naturally. my 7 yo daughter was watering her plants and said to me, with a frustrating tone, "that smells like eggs!"
I set the rocks on my walkway and hosed them down. A milky layer easily came off of all the rocks and they looks so much cleaner. I could probably just continue curing for another month in heated, circulated saltwater, but I put them in some bleach (1g bleach to 10g water) just for good measure.
There is a noticable difference in the rocks as I've lost some material from it dissolving in the vinegar. I personally don't like the idea of losing rock material for the sake of removing some organics with it. My thinking on it is, the rock will still have to go through a curing cycle because of the left over organics. And it doesn't mater if its a little or a lot, It still takes the same amount of time to do it. But it is a possible alternative for those who do want a really clean looking rock but don't want to deal with muratic acid. It's even safer than the bleaching phase, it's just diluted vinegar! Either way, it's pretty cool to try it, even once.

HawaiianReef · Apr 29, 2019

Sippiku said:
I'm bleaching some rock right now.
No need to have water movement, just let it sit for a week or two.
Check out the BRS video on Youtube!

Thanks!
Im yielding to the safe side and am going to just stir it up by hand ever week or so. I'm leary of the fumes igniting

jmsalt1 · Apr 30, 2019

I recently did bleach for a week followed by 3 rounds of RO/DI w/ Prime then muriatic acid on some old Fiji rock. I put down a blue tarp from HD in my driveway in case things got unexpectedly out of hand. First time doing this and I had no issues. IMO, 10:1 is a little more aggressive than needed. I probably ended up closer to 20:1 as I added just enough acid to get a decent reaction going. I didn’t weigh before and after but if I lost more than 5% of my rock I’d be surprised. The total time in the 20:1 bath was about 15 minutes or so. If anyone reading is contemplating I highly recommend obtaining a container that you can fill about half way (rock and water w/ muriatic acid combo) so the reaction can be contained. Do multiple batches if needed rather than maxing out the container and having it overflow all over. Please have baking soda on hand to fully neutralize the solution in the end prior to removing rock from the solution and always wear chemical resistant gloves while working with chemicals. Don’t be a goof and just pour acid into a nearly full container with little or no thought unless you like having a mess to deal with, damaged concrete or a dead lawn. I like my yard too much so the videos of people just letting the acid solution overflow in their yard made me wonder....