Freshly harvested live rock, now what?

[Belgian Anthias]

Freshly harvested live rock, now what?

Suppose you have a 1 kg piece of freshly harvested "live" rock.
Imagine fossil stone that was mined years ago and placed on the reef especially for these purposes. The piece of stone is packed under water so that it remains wet and does not come into contact with the surrounding air after harvest. It is cooled slowly and stored in the dark during transport. On shore, the harvest water is replaced by sufficient fresh seawater and the stone placed in a cool-box is delivered to the door as 'fresh' within 24 hours.
Assuming you're prepared for its arrival, what do you do with it next?
What would you use it for and how?

 

[ahiggins]

I’d QT it lol lord knows what kind of bugs are hiding in that thing and I’d toss in a few hermits or a mythrax

 

[Chrisv.]

A few thoughts:

depending on how much the rock has been cooled, you will see die off. This will happen at both the micro level (bacteria will take a bit of a hit) and macro level (marine inverts).

Assuming the rock was kept in the 70-80F range, you will likely have a lot of life on there. Some will be desirable some will be undesirable. Some will adapt to life in an aquarium, some will not.

If you plan to put it straight into a reef tank (assuming you have a large enough tank to cope with any die off) you should be prepared to deal with undesirable stow away inverts. For example, mantis shrimp. These can be trapped and removed, but they could do damage to an established reef if that's where they are going.

If you're adding it to an established tank, I'd personally put it in a qt tank for a week to be sure you're not bringing in any beasties. If there are corals on there, make sure you tend to their needs.

 

[Belgian Anthias]

Coping with die off?

The only reason to buy "living rock" is to import tropical marine diversity. Every effort has been made to deliver a piece of life-containing stone to the door in the best possible condition. The aim is to transfer as much of the supplied diversity as possible to the aquarium where it can play its part in the planned ecosystem as we envision it and for which we have had it transferred. It is therefore the intention to keep this expensive and valuable piece of stone in its capacity for as long as possible and eventually let it grow like any living medium that we purchase for our purpose and so that the imported life can spread, seeking a balance in our own mini ecosystem for which we have made ourselves responsible.
For this it gets a place in a specially designed tank. We were prepared for the arrival and have conditioned this tank as best as possible for what is to come by pre-installing sufficient load-bearing capacity and provide lighting adapted to the depth where the stone was cultivated.
The stone was delivered, now it must be transferred to its temporary abode under the best possible treatment and conditions.

What do you do with it next and how?
How the delivery is conditioned to its new home? How the new home is conditioned for the new arrival?
What would you use it for ?

 

[Chrisv.]

Your response is extremely confusing. It sounds like you may not know that there WILL be die off of some kind.

Actually it sounds like you plan to sell the stuff and know nothing about the product and want free consulting.

 

[ahiggins]

And it’s probably going to smell pretty bad lol

 

[Timfish]

And it’s probably going to smell pretty bad lol

Having done this a multutude of time over the last 30 years properly shipped there's there's not much oder when opening up boxes.

 

[Pntbll687]

FULL SEND!! Right into the tank, don't look back

 

[Belgian Anthias]

Your response is extremely confusing. It sounds like you may not know that there WILL be die off of some kind.

Actually it sounds like you plan to sell the stuff and know nothing about the product and want free consulting.

I do not want to sell a thing. What I know about the stuff can be consulted, I wrote an article about it.

 

[Belgian Anthias]

The next step is unpacking.
What is the best way to do that, to transfer the valuable piece of "living" rock to its provisional destination with maximum conservation of diversity in mind. How is the provisional or final destination prepared for its arrival in order to optimize the survival chances of the valuable diversity and not end up with a problematic piece of bioburden?

 

[Chrisv.]

I'm sorry, if you wrote an article on this, what's the point of this thread? You started with a question. If you already have what you believe to be the answer, what's your goal here?

 

[JNalley]

Step 1) Unpack and inspect the rock.
If you're concerned about bad hitchhikers or hitchhikers in general follow step 2, otherwise, proceed to step 3
Step 2) Dip and shake rock in a high salt content seawater, repeat this process for about 5-10 minutes (this will get a lot of the critters off of the rock)
Step 3) Inspect the rock again, smell it, look for things that look dead (sponges, algae's, etc) (If nothing proceed to step 5)
Step 4) using a toothbrush dislodge as much of the dead stuff as possible and give it another dip and skake in the salt bucket from step 2
Step 5) If the rock is a nice piece and you want it in your display tank execute the best way to make that happen
5a) If not, break it up and add it as biological filtration to your sump/biological media

That's the process I follow, it's worked for me.

 

[davidcalgary29]

Coping with die off?

The only reason to buy "living rock" is to import tropical marine diversity.

I'll have to disagree here. I think that many people buy live rock in order to import a source of nitrifying bacteria for their aquaria. The risk of "importing tropical marine diversity" of unknown provenance is a reaon many people choose NOT to buy live rock for their builds.

 

[JNalley]

I'm sorry, if you wrote an article on this, what's the point of this thread? You started with a question. If you already have what you believe to be the answer, what's your goal here?

I believe the point may be to learn more about other processes than his/her own, which will allow them to refine their process. There's nothing wrong with asking and learning other ways.

 

[Chrisv.]

I believe the point may be to learn more about other processes than his/her own, which will allow them to refine their process. There's nothing wrong with asking and learning other ways.

Nothing wrong with learning from the community, as long as it's a legit ask for help/input. Op should share their method (since they wrote it up) and start the discussion from there rather than framing it as if they legitimately don't know what to do. Happy to discuss and learn, but the was this thread was started was disingenuous.

 

[JNalley]

Nothing wrong with learning from the community, as long as it's a legit ask for help/input. Op should share their method (since they wrote it up) and start the discussion from there rather than framing it as if they legitimately don't know what to do. Happy to discuss and learn, but the was this thread was started was disingenuous.

I can understand that. However, it may be the OP's intention to not "color" answers with his/her own ideas, which would naturally happen if they posted their method first or shared their article first and then asked. Think of it like keeping a sterile control environment during a science project so you don't taint the result.

 

[Grumblez]

The next step is unpacking.
What is the best way to do that, to transfer the valuable piece of "living" rock to its provisional destination with maximum conservation of diversity in mind. How is the provisional or final destination prepared for its arrival in order to optimize the survival chances of the valuable diversity and not end up with a problematic piece of bioburden?

There's not really any special preparation you can do other than maybe acclimating it you just take from box and if your so inclined put it straight in your tank. Generally better to put it in a separate tank for a few weeks but you seem very unreceptive to that idea for some reason lol.

 

[Belgian Anthias]

I myself assume that the only reason why people would transport a piece of stone from one side of the world to the other and pay the price if this piece of stone can make an important contribution to the creation of the tropical marine mini ecosystem that we want to build at home. I am aware that if everything is not done to keep the piece of "living" rock in its original quality for as long as possible, not much of the original marine diversity will remain and it will therefore contribute very little to the new eco- system. In the other case, it is much simpler and much cheaper to remove a bit of biodiversity from an existing healthy marine aquarium and transfer it in the best condition.
The question is asked what you would do if you had access to a piece of fresh real living stone that has received all the attention to preserve as much of the original diversity as possible. It's not about what I should do, it's about what you would do with it and what measures you could possibly take to preserve the quality of the stone as long as possible.

 

[Belgian Anthias]

I will transfer the stone to a specially designed tank with fresh seawater which I can later connect to the system as a refugium. I will try to preserve the stone in its capacity and eventually grow it, so as to build an ecosystem that can compete, enabling it to survive and disperse, to measure itself against competition.
To make this possible, I provide sufficient load-bearing capacity in the (quarantine) tank so that the tank can bear the sudden introduction of a large amount of bio-load without problems and the piece of life that was introduced can be supplied with enough food to support itself. , food that is insufficiently present in freshly prepared seawater. The build-up of the necessary load-bearing capacity is of course accompanied by the input of competitors for the stone, who will immediately enter the competition for place and food. But we're not that far yet!
First transfer the stone in the best possible condition because it cannot stay too long in its current packaging. What is the effect of opening the packaging on the quality and survival chances of the valuable diversity present? pH shock? The transition from ammonium to ammonia in the transport water?
That is why I decided to remove the stone from its transport water as soon as possible and to transfer it to its destination without removing it from the transportwater. I make sure to avoid a temperature barrier by bringing the tank to the same temperature as the transport water and then very slowly to bring it up to the normal temperature. The temperature is very important to me as it has a major influence on the growth rate of organisms and consequently the survival chances of slower growing but essential organisms. During the first few days, the temperature is increased by only 0.5°C per day.
This is how I would do it until someone convinces me to do it differently.
How would you handle it?

 

[dohc97]

This seems pointless. The old guys like myself remember the days of buying live rock direct or from a middleman that came from the sea. It seems like you are over complicating the process, what is there to gain from dissecting the topic into the smallest of details?