Used rock

[bluebulls49]

So my new 120 is in place plumbed and ready I plan on just moving stuff over from my 100 gallon my question is I have 5 gallon bucket of sand that I cleaned and stored several months ago and some rock from a friend who gave up after aptasia out break rock has been outside drying for a couple weeks should I use the new (dead) sand and how long would it be to make the rock usable I have around 100 lbs of rocks with coral one them to move over as well

 

[saltyphish]

I dont recomemd reusing sand. People do reuse it successfuly mind you but in other cases regret it. You say you have 100lbs of rock in a currently running system? If thats the case that rock should be good to go. How much dry rock do you have? Depending on the amount you might be able to just clean it good and place it in the tank.

 

[bluebulls49]

I have around 50 lbs of rock from my friend it's been outside for a week or so but it did come out of a tank with aptasia

 

[saltyphish]

I have around 50 lbs of rock from my friend it's been outside for a week or so but it did come out of a tank with aptasia

I would either clean it well and add a little at a time or cure it all seperately then add it

 

[bluebulls49]

When you say clean do you mean like scrub it with wire brush or like bleach it

 

[saltyphish]

Scrub it and soak in clean ro water

 

[vanpire]

I have always re-use the sand and rock and I have never had an issue. So my recommendation is clean the sand with regular water and a final rinse with RO water and you will be fine.

For the rock, I did an acid wash to get them clean. I imagine I could do a light acid wash on the sand too, but I just clean them and they are fine.

Van.

 

[tonto95]

I would give the rocks an acid bath and then soaked in clean ro water, the sand you could soak in a bleach solution and rinse with ro water.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

basically your trying to get rid of two things. organics and Phosphate. you dont have to. some like to.
you can test the rock and sand to for that matter for po by putting it into water over night and using a po test.
(po binds to rock no doesnt but po leaches off in water)
organics are different. they dissolve and rot, usually it has higher no than po once dissolved. organics are easy to get out of sand by rinsing, rock not so much.

both No and Po are actually consumed by the bacteria of the cycle(as we all know), but obviously higher numbers can be bad kinda. unless you know how to deal with that. (GFO, aggressive bacteria and Carbon dosing, lanthanum chloride, peroxide)

me I like chaos theory(there is none) and the seeming randomness of nature, Id wash it off with a hose, let it soak in a light peroxide bath over night, maybe test it, probably if the owner was lazy reefer, hose it off and dump 5 kinds of bacteria in it to cycle with some fiji mud.