New Tank, Cleaning Live Rock?

[redrocket]

So I'm back to the site after about 6+ years away from the hobby. I have been all over the forums and starting back with a Fluval Spec V tank. Starting my modifications to the tank and it got me thinking about the cycling that is ahead.

 

I love the look of live rock but don't like all the pest that come along with it. Has anyone tried a sort of dip like you do coral to rid of pest? Is there a go to method for dipping live rock to remove pest before putting in tank for cycling?

 

Glad to be back. =)

[farkwar]

Out six years?

 

Youll be surprised at the lack of quality primo equatorial live rock available now.

 

If you find some, please let me know.

 

As to your question, cycle it in your tank long enough for the pests to die, or show themselves so you can nuke them with syringe full of H2O2. /shrug

 

The pest im dealing with now is bryopsis. It came in on frag plugs from a SoCal Ebay vendor. All my pests came in on frags, actually. I would not worry about it too much. It only takes one cell of algae or one egg laden flatworm to mess up your day. Zoa eating nudis look exactly like the zoas that you just bought, thats what they eat. Payday, im buying 100 lettuce nudibranchs.

[NaturalViolence]

Nuking a rock is easy. You can use almost anything toxin that can be easily neutralized for this. Strong alkalies like sodium hydroxide, strong acids like citric/hydrochloric/muriatic/acetic/phosphoric/nitric, hydrogen peroxide, and of course good old bleach. Now if you're talking about removing pests without killing other organisms that's a whole different story, and depends on what exactly you're trying to kill.

[redrocket]

Yeah that was my main concern, not that great of selection of live rock and I don't want all the hitchhikers that may come with it like, bristleworms, flatworms, etc.

 

I do like the look of live rock and didn't want to use the dry rock. I see people coral dip new frags before putting in their tanks and I thought I could do the same to flush out any nuisance that may be waiting.

[NaturalViolence]

There is no guaranteed way to remove all pests from live rock without nuking the rock completely. Which effectively turns it into dry rock. The best you can do is monitor the rock for awhile in a quarantine tank and try to manually remove any pests you find before introducing it into the tank. But this is far from fool proof since most hitchhikers have microscopic larvae and/or hide really really well (if they didn't they wouldn't survive very long in nature). There is no way to get the good hitchhikers without some risk of getting the bad ones. You have to choose both (live rock) or neither (dry rock). Quite frankly if you have the money I prefer live rock. You can just deal with any negative hitchhikers later on if you watch your tank closely (as you should be doing either way).

[farkwar]

I really like his dip idea.

 

Soaking the rocks in Coral RX and say quad strength FWE instead, (not acid or H2O2) a couple times during the curing, sounds ingenious now.

 

It would leave the majority of what you want on live rock on it. I would then use bottled bacteria to replace any bacteria the dip kills.

 

All the coralline snd macro algae would be virtually unaffected. Crap algae too, but all the creapy crawlies should be decimated.

 

I like it a lot.

 

Anyone want to buy a 50# box of never used ReefCleaner rock half off? Is dry rock hardware or livestock?