Live Rock Bleach Question

[ibob991]

Hello,

I am in the process of cleaning old live rock that was allowed to dry out. After 1 week in water/bleach solution, all the rock still has parts that are brown but I was under the impression that the bleach would clean the entire rock in 1 week time. I have now put the rock back in a fresh batch of water/bleach and will wait another week, but I am curious what experience people have had with this.

 

[Peace River]

Bleach sterilizes the rock, but doesn't necessarily whiten all of the discoloration of the rock. Muriatic acid takes of the top layer of the rock, but even that doesn't whiten old rock completely.

NOTE: If you choose to use muriatic acid, please make sure you understand the proper way to use it and respect it - it can be a dangerous chemical with highly negative results to your health if used incorrectly.

 

[ibob991]

Bleach sterilizes the rock, but doesn't necessarily whiten all of the discoloration of the rock. Muriatic acid takes of the top layer of the rock, but even that doesn't whiten old rock completely.

NOTE: If you choose to use muriatic acid, please make sure you understand the proper way to use it and respect it - it can be a dangerous chemical with highly negative results to your health if used incorrectly.

According to the brs investigate video, it's not beneficial to use acid, bleach does the same thing without losing rock. What I am confused about is that in the video they claim the bleach will remove discoloration. Hopefully more people will chime in with personal experience, maybe it only happens in prolonged use.

 

[Timfish]

I stopped using muratic acid 2 decades ago and bleach well over a decade ago. what I use now for cleaning any rock removed from an aquarium is with tapwater and a small scrub brush and sometimes locally some H2O2 (3%, what you find in your bathroom cupboard). Endoliths burrow into the rock and trying to emove the discolration they cause requres a ton of effort that's unnecessary.

 

[ibob991]

I stopped using muratic acid 2 decades ago and bleach well over a decade ago. what I use now for cleaning any rock removed from an aquarium is with tapwater and a small scrub brush and sometimes locally some H2O2 (3%, what you find in your bathroom cupboard). Endoliths burrow into the rock and trying to emove the discolration they cause requres a ton of effort that's unnecessary.

Are you saying that you find it not worthwhile to shoot for white rock, as long as it's sterile then just go with it?

 

[mfinn]

Hello,

I am in the process of cleaning old live rock that was allowed to dry out. After 1 week in water/bleach solution, all the rock still has parts that are brown but I was under the impression that the bleach would clean the entire rock in 1 week time. I have now put the rock back in a fresh batch of water/bleach and will wait another week, but I am curious what experience people have had with this.

I've had to do a second round of bleach on batches of rock.
I usually only do it when there is left over organic matter on the rock.
Sometimes the rock has stains that just don't come out, but that's a judgement call.

 

[PatW]

I stopped using muratic acid 2 decades ago and bleach well over a decade ago. what I use now for cleaning any rock removed from an aquarium is with tapwater and a small scrub brush and sometimes locally some H2O2 (3%, what you find in your bathroom cupboard). Endoliths burrow into the rock and trying to emove the discolration they cause requres a ton of effort that's unnecessary.

If your rock is strongly discolored, I do not believe that there is anything that will make it white.

For bleach, I add a cup to about 25 gallons and soak over night. Then I scrub and wash off with a hose. If it is still discolored enough to irk me,I repeat the bleach treatment.

I guess muriatic acid will clean the rock a bit more. I have treated rock with muriatic acid. About a cup to 25 gallons and 25 - 50 lbs of rock. I never do it inside. Muriatic acid takes the rock and converts it from rock, calcium carbonate, to calcium chloride and CO2. So the process devours rock. It is usually done to remove a thin layer of rock as a way of reducing the amount of phosphates the rock might release. I don’t use it for. Whitening rock.

Be that as it may, overtime dry rock will become strongly colored anyway. Making it perfectly white is rather pointless. I do admit to having an impulse to want my dry rock to be perfectly white initially even if it is a bit silly.

 

[Dkeller_nc]

Just a note, but hydrochloric acid (muriatic acid) and bleach do two separate things, with some overlap. Hydrochloric acid will dissolved the outer surface of the rock where the majority of precipitated calcium phosphate would be located. Sodium hypochlorite/sodium hydroxide (bleach) will oxidize organic compounds so that they can be rinsed away.

The overlap comment refers to the fact that some of the organics that might be removed by the bleach will typically be on the outer surface of the rock, which the hydrochloric acid will remove. So an HCl treatment will accomplish a good bit of the work that a bleach treatment will do. OTOH, the chemistry of bleach will not dissolve abiotically precipitated calcium phosphate, but it will remove most plated-on dead sea life, all of which contains some amount of organic phosphate.

If the rock was in a reef tank with unknown water parameters, it's probably a good idea to treat it with hydrochloric acid, since if the tank environment had a high amount of phosphate in the water, there may be a good bit of precipitated calcium phosphate which may take several months to re-dissolve when it's put back into a tank.

On the other hand, if the rock is harvested from the ocean from reef areas, it's likely to have a lot of dead sea life, but not a lot of abiotically precipitated calcium phosphate, so a bleach treatment may be sufficient.

If the rock is terrestrially-mined and new, it's probably not all that beneficial to do either treatment.