Yeah I had not thought of that either. But its not hard to test after you do a bleach bath or what ever. Put the rock into a brute can with rodi or salt water, let sit for a week and test the water with a Hanna checker to see if there is any copper in the water.Didn't consider the possibility that old rock acquired might have absorbed copper. Unless source well known. Perhaps best to seed dry rock with live rubble and call it a day
My understanding as it pertains to copper and phosphates and other absorbed compounds that you can't always test for it since it needs to be leached out of the rock and a week might not be long enough. Could be wrong but if what you're saying is 100% valid then that would solve the issue although hard to do before it's acquired. Doubt the seller going through that hassle but at least on our end we don't put bad rock into the display and likely can find one seeking FOWLR wanting it.
Yes you are not doing yourself any favors with low temps and they are probably dead and yes it will leach out until you skim it out or do 100% water changes every few days. I've been working on my rock for 2 months and it's at 1.0pho and 60nit. Nitrates haven't budged since cycle and phosphate has halved.
That fake stuff weighs a ton as well. I have a few "arches" and some Marco. I'd estimate 4x the weight. Most of mine is natural.
They changed it up and recommend dark curing rock now as seen in their new investigate where they took 16 tanks with 8 different methods for 16 weeks. Their best results came from dark cured rock. They threw the kitchen sink of problems at them all and the dark cure handled them the best. It was rather interesting. They took "diversity" samples and measured substances that make up >=1% of natural sea water and the results were interesting. They showed a method of using dry rock and gaining 90%+ diversity. I bit and bought a bag. It was $40, so much cheaper than TBS rock and no pests. After dealing with dinos, you become cautious and will experiment to give yourself the best chance of not getting them again.
You are definitely not destroying all the Phosphates with bleach.
Yeah idk why people wouldn't do this unless you have a lot of pest maybe.
I've read of people using Citric Acid before but where did you come by it and how much do you use?When we built our 750g, upgrading from 400 a year ago we needed more live rock. I had collected 100's of lbs of rock over the years from other breakdowns. I also had about 400lbs of rock from my last tank crash. When the tank crashed (sump blew a seam and topoff came on and kept trying to refill it) we ended up with the 400lbs from the sump which were covered in dead zoas, xenia, clavularia, gsp, mushrooms. The other 300+ lbs had been sitting in buckets, tubs, milk crates on the side of the guest house for over 10 years accumulating all that mother nature could drop and pour on it.
We took a 150g rubbermaid tub and made a strong concentration of Citric Acid. Then Soaked the rock for 48 hours. We then pulled the rock out (and thankfully) put it on a tarp in the back yard to clean it off with a presure washer.
The Citric acid not only broken down all the dead life on the rock work, but it actually etched away the surface of the live rock - Getting rid of the coraline and algae on the rock. When we pulled the 700lbs of rock out of the tub I was blown away to find almost 30lbs of sand sitting in the bottom of the bin. The Citric Acid literally dissolved the surface off the rock.
When we started presure washing the rock it was like milk with calcium washing off. It took several rinses with the pressure washer. Then a soak in tap water, and another pressure washer.
When we filled up the tank with water for the first time there was still a very fine layer of silt that came off the rock but it cleared up in about 36 hours.
The rock was immaculately clean to start with and quickly grew all the appropriate crap and looked seasoned right away. We used 700lbs of fresh rock and 300+ lbs of active live rock.
The brown, grey on this rock is a biome that developed within 24 hours of the rock going in the tank. 72 Hours after water was in the tank it was gone and never seen again.
This is the sand created by acid washing the dead rock. There was no sand in the rock bins or tubs, this was all created by soaking the rock.
72 hours after filling - The 750g is just the display of a 1500g system. So when we added all the fresh live rock and water we just ran it for 24 hours then opened the valve to connect it to the system and added fish and corals immediately.
6 months later.
Dave B
I seriously doubt you would kill off all the bacteria. There are so many strains and I'm sure some are tolerable to lower temps.
Perhaps lanthanum chloride will speed up the leeching of phosphates
