Fresh Liverock Shedding - How would you remove detritus?

[ginoandres]

Hello everyone,



As you can see in this video, my liverock came very much alive! This is my first reef tank and I opted for liverock as you can get it very fresh here in Taiwan. So far I've seen a sea cucumber, clams, macroalgae, pipe organ coral (not sure if it survived transit), wild Zoas or Palys (not sure which), purple and green sponges, fanworms, and a live mushroom coral. It's pretty cool to find new creatures almost every day... and so far it's all been pretty positive except for the tiny crab or two that I know is hiding in the rock. I will get those eventually if they prove to be an issue. Now for my questions to all of you folks:

- There's a lot of detritus on the rocks from the die-off of transit a week ago, mostly dead Zoa/Palys as you can see in the video. I want to be very careful with Palytoxin, so how should I go about removing the dying polyps? Any risk in just tweezing them off? There's also what look like long hairs (in the middle rock) that my friend said were worms, although they look very dead to me.

- Will all of this crud eventually break down and lead to cleaner rock? I can tolerate a mess for a while as long as I know it'll look better in a couple months...

I understand all of this shedding is part of the cycling process with these rocks, but I would like to remove as much of the detritus as I can to soften the inevitable algae bloom. I was thinking of using a toothbrush to scrub the gunk off the rocks and a tweezer to remove the dead Zoa slime.

I also tested the water today:
Ammonia - 0 ppm
Nitrites - 0 ppm
Nitrates - 60 ppm

It's all running in a 40 gallon custom tank with 20 gallon sump and plenty of liverock, both in the DT and the sump as well. I dosed a bottle of Tim's One & Only a few days ago.

Thanks for any suggestions you can offer!

 

[reef_junkie]

If it were me, and I have done this in the past, I'd leave them alone if it's a small amount. Keep flow up in the tank to circulate everything to the skimmer if you're running one. The ammonia will help cycle the tank. As far as i know (which isn't much[emoji14]) some fish eat zoas with no problem.

 

[ginoandres]

No skimmer running yet. And ammonia is at 0 ppm while nitrates are getting up there... anyway I can wait if it's best, but it seems to me all this gunk would just contribute to algae down the line?

 

[brandon429]

Your video is good detail of curing uncured rock it would be great for our readers to see

http://reef2reef.com/threads/new-ta...d-cocktail-shrimp-live-rock-no-shrimp.214618/

that thread has a dedicated section to your type of live rock, detailed.

the life you received is why that rock is marine gold, take care of it well. if you removed them by scraping, external rasping/tweezing it will look nice
protect eyes face wash hands, standard lab procedures if you excise the tissue. wash area afterwards, the for sure goal with this form of live rock curing is:
-feed it, its live due to animals deposited and accreted in every crevice. they make whole waste pellets always, and pump that out of the crevices.
-export the waste the lr produces, literal detritus exudes every second from rock this live, we pay for that amnt of life, export around it.
-guide the tissues that didn't make it back off the rock, farm the ones that do, the less you feed this rock the more the loss will be within a year. particulate feed, spot feed, being in a tank with decent fish bioload, and strong export and zero ammonia ever is the cure process for ya.
-your major biological risk is loss cascading from any rotting materials making neighbors die due to ammonia toxicity locally produced, you will never have a deficit of bacteria with this rock, the macro animals are the total risk and many can be preserved in a well fed, well exported tank
B

 

[Breakthecycle2]

Microscrub, problem solved.

 

[ginoandres]

Your video is good detail of curing uncured rock it would be great for our readers to see

http://reef2reef.com/threads/new-ta...d-cocktail-shrimp-live-rock-no-shrimp.214618/

that thread has a dedicated section to your type of live rock, detailed.

the life you received is why that rock is marine gold, take care of it well. if you removed them by scraping, external rasping/tweezing it will look nice
protect eyes face wash hands, standard lab procedures if you excise the tissue. wash area afterwards, the for sure goal with this form of live rock curing is:
-feed it, its live due to animals deposited and accreted in every crevice. they make whole waste pellets always, and pump that out of the crevices.
-export the waste the lr produces, literal detritus exudes every second from rock this live, we pay for that amnt of life, export around it.
-guide the tissues that didn't make it back off the rock, farm the ones that do, the less you feed this rock the more the loss will be within a year. particulate feed, spot feed, being in a tank with decent fish bioload, and strong export and zero ammonia ever is the cure process for ya.
-your major biological risk is loss cascading from any rotting materials making neighbors die due to ammonia toxicity locally produced, you will never have a deficit of bacteria with this rock, the macro animals are the total risk and many can be preserved in a well fed, well exported tank
B

Great information, thanks for sharing. I also read through that thread, lots of helpful tips.

 

[ginoandres]

Microscrub, problem solved.

What is that? Not sure what you're referring to and a Google search didn't help clarify...

 

[Breakthecycle2]

http://reef2reef.com/threads/micro-scrubbing-bubbles.224373/page-41#post-2850718

 

[brandon429]

I can see the implied benefits of the scrubbing bubbles but one detraction I would have is that bubbles cannot stop tankwide ammonia cascading, so we need to make sure obvious dead or smelly tissues are hand removed, not left in the system at all as it is began with these uncured rocks.

Now if the rock is clean, live, active, has strong animals in tow, bubble away it can't hurt a thing. it would never be advised to leave anything smelly or clearly deceased on the rocks and allow bubbles to move the tissues around the tank. this live rock featured above never looked bad anyway, bubble away!

 

[psidriven]

Wow, that rock is really chocked full of life and the new bugs coming out is pretty fun to find.

If you have access to filter socks, I'd put a sock in the sump and use a tube to siphon the crud into the sock, then clean the sock out removing crud. Probably good to do to minimize the amount of waste build up.

 

[ginoandres]

I can see the implied benefits of the scrubbing bubbles but one detraction I would have is that bubbles cannot stop tankwide ammonia cascading, so we need to make sure obvious dead or smelly tissues are hand removed, not left in the system at all as it is began with these uncured rocks.

Now if the rock is clean, live, active, has strong animals in tow, bubble away it can't hurt a thing. it would never be advised to leave anything smelly or clearly deceased on the rocks and allow bubbles to move the tissues around the tank. this live rock featured above never looked bad anyway, bubble away!

I went ahead and removed most of the dead and decaying material and the tank looks much better. Interestingly, the Zoas opened up within a few hours and looked brighter and better than they have since I added the rock. I also did a 20% water change as my Nitrates were getting up there, but Ammonia and Nitrites have remained at 0.

So can anyone with experience using this kind of live rock share whether or not this rock will eventually look cleaner? It's pretty dirty looking right now, even after brushing the surfaces with a toothbrush and siphoning a bunch out. Perhaps you could share on this, Brandon?

Wow, that rock is really chocked full of life and the new bugs coming out is pretty fun to find.

If you have access to filter socks, I'd put a sock in the sump and use a tube to siphon the crud into the sock, then clean the sock out removing crud. Probably good to do to minimize the amount of waste build up.

That's a great idea. I've been using filter pads in the sump to date, but I'm going to try and find a filter sock.

 

[brandon429]

In my opinion this is the curing/shedding process that takes months, just have to keep exporting. When we scuba dive, we typically see depending on area that the rocks on the reef are covered in growths that aquarists deem unsightly

We try and cure off that periphyton and benthic growth down to just coralline ideally, and whatever we've glued to the rocks. These growths are potentially thousands of years established onto a given rock, so curing it in the way we want them to look is a long time of high current, manual and natural cleaning, and constant exports. You have the most ideal rock we could have, but it's the busiest action required type rock as well as it cures into how we want it to look, a very unnatural human-preferred look. What you are being compelled to remove is what breaks down as bulk waste into ammonia during shipping, or if people do not hand guide the rock as it cures, you are removing not only plant portions but actual animals that didn't select to stay on the rock and let go for one reason or another. The action you are doing prevents the death cascade that causes more animals to die off in return.

I linked your thread to our cycling thread this is best example of guided curing I've seen due to the vid and details etc.

the insides of the rock are even slower to clear than the outsides!

 

[ginoandres]

In my opinion this is the curing/shedding process that takes months, just have to keep exporting. When we scuba dive, we typically see depending on area that the rocks on the reef are covered in growths that aquarists deem unsightly

We try and cure off that periphyton and benthic growth down to just coralline ideally, and whatever we've glued to the rocks. These growths are potentially thousands of years established onto a given rock, so curing it in the way we want them to look is a long time of high current, manual and natural cleaning, and constant exports. You have the most ideal rock we could have, but it's the busiest action required type rock as well as it cures into how we want it to look, a very unnatural human-preferred look. What you are being compelled to remove is what breaks down as bulk waste into ammonia during shipping, or if people do not hand guide the rock as it cures, you are removing not only plant portions but actual animals that didn't select to stay on the rock and let go for one reason or another. The action you are doing prevents the death cascade that causes more animals to die off in return.

I linked your thread to our cycling thread this is best example of guided curing I've seen due to the vid and details etc.

the insides of the rock are even slower to clear than the outsides!

Thanks for the thorough reply, Brandon! Truly fascinating. It's so very cool how every morning I wake up and find new lifeforms coming from this rock... in hindsight I'm glad I opted for this stuff rather than dry rock.