Spores, cysts and dormant things on old live rock

[ajmckay]

Hey everyone.

 

So over a year ago I took my tank down, divested myself of all inhabitants, and put all the live rock into a bin of saltwater with a pump.

 

Well I've decided to set the tank back up in the coming weeks! It's a 40 breeder with a 30 breeder sump - the sump includes a display section.

 

I just ordered about 20lbs of BRS Pukani dry rock because the scape I'm aiming for is a large pillar or clump of rock on one side of the tank. To do this though my plan was to re-use at least some of the old rock - I mean I've kept it around this whole time and there's some decent pieces in there too.

 

So my question is this... The rock's been sitting long enough that they appear to be pretty clean. Before taking the tank down there was definitely some pest algae on it - and most of it was also covered in coralline. What, if any, kinds of spores, cysts, or other forms of dormant life could come back to bloom once this rock is again exposed to proper conditions?

 

Seriously this stuff is pretty devoid of life... A bunch of snails, chitons, and other creatures tried to escape but they dried up on the sides of the bin. I'm sure there are still bacterial colonies on it, but my other thought if I really want to be safe is to dry it all out completely, like maybe even boil it or put it in the oven at a low temp for a day... I'm shooting for a pest free tank here...

 

Let me know if you're aware of any potential issues. Thanks! Here's a pic of the rock in saltwater.

 

 

[ajmckay]

Sooo... Any thoughts on this?

 

I realize it's kind of a strange dilemma... I would hate to introduce any nuisance algae that has somehow gone dormant but will wake up when conditions are right...

 

At the same time though, it would be nice to use the rock to help cycle the tank and I doubt I purchased enough dry rock to do what I want to do... So I'll also use the existing rock to supplement that..

[ajmckay]

Okay I suppose I'll finish this thread for the sake of someone who may google this topic in the future...

 

I've been messing around with creating a scape from the dry rocks I have and I figured I would probably need a few pieces of rubble at some point so I went down to inspect this rock again and I found a few small pieces of vegetation... Not sure what exactly but it was probably some type of algae. I can't say whether it's good or bad, but it's definitely there. It doesn't seem to be growing a lot (there were just a few patches of it on 1 rock in particular) and it was clear for the most part, but it was alive for sure.

 

Maybe it's surviving on absorbing nutrients from the water? There's a thin layer of gunk on the bottom still...

[farkwar]

Wash it in vinegar.

 

Rinse.

 

New salt water.

 

Buy a couple pieces good coralline live rock to reseed. Heater. Pump. Skimmer. Good light. Water changes. Ca and HCO3.

 

6 months it should be covered in coralline and good to go.

[brandon429]

you put live rock in a bin unlighted, unfed for a year but kept it submerged? thats gold info regarding cycling threads and algae battle theads. something else in your post brings a thought

 

unless you are sourcing inverts, frags, snails with importing hard surface shells, etc I dont think its needed to just blast live rock devoid of life. that is unless you were battling ostreopsis dinos in which case I can see the justification

 

you took away the usual conditions for algae, yet it persisted. again a reason to have an action plan for it when it arises

its not hard for algae to extract what it needs from substrate, from pockets of organics of the rot from dying creatures, for years in a bin.

 

 

but its rare we get to verify that.

now if we could just get a little ghost ammonia testing, and non api level feedback, that'd complete the cycling post gold portion of you keeping live rock in a bin for a year. current quasiscience says same organic sinking feeds the nitrifiers the whole time, as if you ghost fed and that any standard test kit that doesnt always read .25 would indicate the same nitrification abilities between your nonfed, binned lr as pristine purple live rock would show from a standard tank. this is a nice test of nitrifier adaptativity.

B

[ajmckay]

you put live rock in a bin unlighted, unfed for a year but kept it submerged? thats gold info regarding cycling threads and algae battle theads. something else in your post brings a thought

 

unless you are sourcing inverts, frags, snails with importing hard surface shells, etc I dont think its needed to just blast live rock devoid of life. that is unless you were battling ostreopsis dinos in which case I can see the justification

 

you took away the usual conditions for algae, yet it persisted. again a reason to have an action plan for it when it arises

its not hard for algae to extract what it needs from substrate, from pockets of organics of the rot from dying creatures, for years in a bin.

 

 

but its rare we get to verify that.

now if we could just get a little ghost ammonia testing, and non api level feedback, that'd complete the cycling post gold portion of you keeping live rock in a bin for a year. current quasiscience says same organic sinking feeds the nitrifiers the whole time, as if you ghost fed and that any standard test kit that doesnt always read .25 would indicate the same nitrification abilities between your nonfed, binned lr as pristine purple live rock would show from a standard tank. this is a nice test of nitrifier adaptativity.

B

 

That's an interesting observation Brandon... Honestly I hadn't thought about using this as an experiment for something other than algae. My guess is that it is still biologically active, at some level.

 

I'll see if I can find a test kit and verify that.

[ihglifelol]

mostly algae make cysts, not many pest macros but almost all unicellular algae make cysts.  bubble algae wont cyst and will die in a few days,most unicellular algae will go into cysts in a day or 2, however,green hair algae is a different story, they can cyst in very cold places and survive as a cyst for a year. i took out some pest green hair algae in a container, there was no water, algae was moist, put it in freezer. 8 months later put it back in tank. came back to life. many fauna might survive on decomposed algae. if you have saltwater water bears, they will survive, they can be cysys for decades

 

[1891Bro]

12 minutes ago, ihglifelol said:

yes, in fact 

i took out some pest green hair algae in a container, there was no water, algae was moist, put it in freezer. 3 months later put it back in tank. came back to life

algae is realy tough. good to freeze if you want just the righ amount ol algae if you are breeding snails, 

Bit late to the party are we?

[ihglifelol]

yah ;-;

oh well.

[RaymondNoodles]

On 5/20/2018 at 5:53 PM, 1891Bro said:

Bit late to the party are we?

Better late than never. I thoroughly enjoyed this thread. Thanks to those who keep

them going.