I just ordered Gulf Live Rock, what do I need to do when I get it?

[FishPureLuck]

I just ordered 10lbs to "seed" my caribsea dry rock aquascape that I made. I currently have a 34 gallon SPS tank with caribsea dry rock aquascape, and my Nuvo 80 AIO is showing up today. I'm going to get the 80 started with live caribsea sand "same as the 34", 50lb caribsea dry rock aquascape "same as the 34"and 10lbs of Gulf live rock "for a litte help and diversity". As soon as the 80 is ready, I'm going to move everything over and shut down the 34 "for now". My question is, what should I do to/with the gulf rock before I stick it in the new tank with the dry rock? Should I put it in a 10 gallon that I have set up on my patio and watch it? Should I dip it in anything? I got the cheap shipping, but I'm right across Florida from them, so that shouldn't be an issue. Any help would be great!

 

[Dan_P]

I just ordered 10lbs to "seed" my caribsea dry rock aquascape that I made. I currently have a 34 gallon SPS tank with caribsea dry rock aquascape, and my Nuvo 80 AIO is showing up today. I'm going to get the 80 started with live caribsea sand "same as the 34", 50lb caribsea dry rock aquascape "same as the 34"and 10lbs of Gulf live rock "for a litte help and diversity". As soon as the 80 is ready, I'm going to move everything over and shut down the 34 "for now". My question is, what should I do to/with the gulf rock before I stick it in the new tank with the dry rock? Should I put it in a 10 gallon that I have set up on my patio and watch it? Should I dip it in anything? I got the cheap shipping, but I'm right across Florida from them, so that shouldn't be an issue. Any help would be great!

Much depends on how concerned you are about potentially troublesome hitchhikers. Are you the type that would lose sleep over it or would you just consider it the price of live rock and deal with it? The paranoid would throw the rock into fresh salt water in the dark for months to kill everything but the bacteria on the rock. The prudent adventurist would put the rock in an aquarium with fresh salt water under light and see what crawls out.

 

[BetterJake]

Much depends on how concerned you are about potentially troublesome hitchhikers. Are you the type that would lose sleep over it or would you just consider it the price of live rock and deal with it? The paranoid would throw the rock into fresh salt water in the dark for months to kill everything but the bacteria on the rock. The prudent adventurist would put the rock in an aquarium with fresh salt water under light and see what crawls out.

I presume curing would defeat the whole point of procuring this type of rock?

I would certainly pull off anything that died in transit, of course. However, as Dan mentioned, I would put it into the DT and see what fun stuff tagged along for the ride. I assume it's going to be a few weeks or days before you add anything to the tank so you can remove any undesirables if needed.

 

[strawberryfish]

I only ordered 35 lbs so I only did a quick visual check for anything I didn't want in the tank, put it in a tub with some saltwater for about an hour and let anything alive come out so I could ID any bad hitchhikers of which I found none besides a small quarter sized patch of pest algae that was easily removed.

 

[dstockwell]

I bought 10lbs, simply swished it around in a bucket of saltwater and added it to tank. You may get a bio blume since its wrapped in paper and not in water. I lost most of the halimeda, but got a rose coral and couple other niceties.

 

[BetterJake]

I only ordered 35 lbs so I only did a quick visual check for anything I didn't want in the tank, put it in a tub with some saltwater for about an hour and let anything alive come out so I could ID any bad hitchhikers of which I found none besides a small quarter sized patch of pest algae that was easily removed.

Good call! Still wish I went live ocean rock on my first tank. Next time. Happy reefing!

 

[Baronen]

I ordered 35 pounds next day and most of the bad inverts died. There were two dead mantis shrimp as well as a couple larger pistol shrimp that would have been a nuisance. Some how all the bristle worms died too (I don’t like the look of them so this is a positive for me). I put the rock in immediately. Somehow everything I would have wanted to live, lived. Just found a red emerald and another smaller crab last week

 

[FishPureLuck]

I'm thinking I should just put it in the 10 gallon on the patio and watch it for a week. It's easier to get the pests out there, and it gets blasted by the sun so it'll keep everything alive. I want to just stick it in the DT and let it roll, but I'm not sure that I want to deal with the consequences. All of my hundreds of gallons of reef tanks in the past 25 years were throw live ocean rock in and let it roll, but now I'm trying to be a little proactive in my old age "46". I'm open to you guys changing my mind, I'm asking for help, not confirmation.

 

[FishPureLuck]

So my plan is to just put it in the 10 gallon that is already running on my patio and see what comes out of the rocks. This will be going in a tank that will be primarily SPS, what should I look out for and remove before I put it in the DT?