Cooking rock questions.

[zoohed]

Ok I get the gist of cooking rock and all that. I’ve never done it though and am wondering what the success is like as far as aptasia dying off and nuisance algae dying off?  I’m assuming with the removal of light the algae will go over time. I’m getting ready to start a new build in a few months and want to use my existing rock to seed a bunch of dry rock I’ve got sitting around. 

[seabass]

I've seen live rock tanks in local fish stores which have no light fixtures above them.  Often, I still see aiptasia anemones on the rock.  Hair algae is normally not present, but could possibly return given adequate lighting, light spectrum, and nutrients.

 

Is the rock encrusted with coralline algae?  If so, maybe you might wish to cure it in another way (lit but not fed, and with a cleanup crew).  Maybe use some peppermint shrimp to take care of the aiptasia for you.  Do you have any pics of the rock?

[zoohed]

I didn’t think it would take care of the aiptasia but I swore I heard Melev say it in a video I watched the other day so I felt compelled to ask. It’s currently a mess due to poor husbandry on my part and I’m looking mostly to get rid of the hair algae at this point and am ok losing coralline in the process as I will reseed the display with some fresh live rock. 

[seabass]

Well, aiptasia is photosynthetic, so there would be a point where darkness and lack of food would starve it to death.  I'm not sure when that just might be, they are hardy and adaptive critters.  Too bad they aren't very attractive (but instead are damaging to other more desirable corals).

 

A good herbivorous cleanup crew could take care of hair algae for you.  I'd be tempted to try that while you cure it (versus nuking it, which I know you haven't proposed doing).  Reduce the light cycle and feedings too.

[zoohed]

Currently it is sitting fallow so The light cycle is the only thing keeping anything alive and it’s only going for a single blasto that’s still rocking along. I’m more moving the rock because I need to break this tank down to make room for the 40b that’s going to take its place.  

[Clown79]

You could scrub the rock down of any algae, do a peroxide treatment and then return to tank or newly mixed salt water in a bucket for use in the new tank.

 

For aiptasia you have a few options.

 

Aiptasia x

 

injecting boiling water into them, I believe @Tamberav has used this method.

 

Lemon juice I believe has been used

 

Adding peppermint shrimp to a bucket after treating the rock for algae and letting them get rid of the aiptasia

[Tamberav]

You don't have to even inject them ..no needle...I just squirt them with the boiling water and they melt and then I usually pull back on the plunger and pull their leftover guts off the rock. 

 

If they hide in holes just flood their hole with the water.

[zoohed]

Ok good to know. Maybe I’ll nail them with boiling water then put it all together to “cook” and seed the other rock for a few months while I get it all together. 

[zoohed]

Ok when I actually take a second to look at it most of the rock isn’t that bad. I’ve got some gha and some bubble algae plus some aptasia but nothing of plague proportions or anything. Maybe a little low light in a bucket with some dry rock to seed will do it all some good?  

[mcarroll]

Cooking rock is usually a process used for nasty rock.

 

If your rock is live, forget about doing that as you're wreck what life there is.

 

Like said above (whatever tank, bucket or bit it ends  up in) you should really consider manual removal of the algae (see Melev's vid) and manual treatment of the aiptasia.

 

Be patient and persistent - do not look for miracle cures.  Turn the rocks over 180 degrees after you have the top halves cleared so you can see what/if anything is growing on the other side and treat that as needed as well.  Adding one or more peppermint shrimps is a GREAT idea if there are any anemones you just can't get to....but with nothing keeping you from moving rocks around as you work, this might never be needed.

 

Since there's almost nothing else in the tank with that rock, you have no reason to rush and every reason to succeed doing this manually and thus preserving all the good life on your rocks.  👍

[Tired]

Don't cook it, that's what you do with rock that's beyond all hope. And, very important- rock that does NOT have palythoas, zoanthids, or anything resembling them on it. Boiling those will release palytoxin into the air and potentially release you into the hospital. 

 

I don't see anything on there that looks all that bad. Pull off the algae you don't want, treat the anemones one way or the other, and you should be able to get rid of it. Also, figure out why you have the algae in the first place. If you've figured it out, stop doing whatever caused it.

[seabass]

3 hours ago, Tired said:

Don't cook it... Boiling those...

Just a clarification for those playing along at home.  "Cooking" rock has nothing to do with actually heating the rock.  It's a process to clean the rock of organics and phosphate (essentially leaving just bacterial life).

 

You might do this to some nasty rock that was removed from someone's tank (and then dried).  In other words, rock that has no beneficial, non-bacterial life on it (like pods, worms, micro inverts, coralline, etc).  We typically wish to keep the biodiversity of actual live rock.

 

You would use one or more containers to cure the rock.  During the weekly process, you shake the rock out in the water to remove the loose organics, then you place the rock in a clean container of water.  This is repeated for a couple of months.

 

The containers are usually not exposed to light, and typically just contain a powerhead for circulation (as if you were cycling live rock).  The difference from typical cycling is that you are not interested in retaining any non-bacterial life.

 

People have done this with sections of rock in their tanks.  Then they reintroduced the rocks back into their tanks, with the hope/intent to have the other rock seed life back onto the newly cleaned (cooked) rock.

 

This is generally done using saltwater, but it's possible to do this with freshwater too (especially with dry rock).  Again, the idea is just to remove all organics (as well as phosphate) from the rock, making it devoid of non-bacterial life as well as dead organic material.  When using freshwater, the resulting rock will not contain marine strains of nitrifying bacteria.

[Tired]

Ah, re-curing! My bad, I thought OP meant literal cooking, as in using heat to kill off everything on the rock and wind up with smelly dead rock. 

 

I wouldn't suggest doing either form of cooking. There's no need for any form of nuclear option here, the rock is salvageable and much of the life on it has value to the aquarium. Manual removal, treatment with your aiptasia removal of choice, biological controls, and husbandry corrections should fix your issues. Once you've got parameters stable and maybe cut down on the hair algae some, a few berghia nudibranchs would be ideal for the aiptasia, if you can get some. Or peppermint shrimp- slower and less neat about it, but they won't starve when they run out of nems, so you can keep them after. 

 

If it's aiptasia here and there, IMO, superglue is good. Pull the rock out slowly so the nem shrinks up tiny, cover it with superglue, wait a little bit for the glue to skin over (long enough to cure it fully if there are any creatures that may pick at the glue!), then put it back. 

 

Alternately, I've read about people who've had success using dehydration. Drain the water down to about an inch (for creatures to flee into) and just spray the rock with water now and then to keep it lightly moist. You won't get all the aiptasia, but most of your inverts are going to be more resilient to dehydration than the aiptasia, so it'll cut down on them. 

 

And then there's always the boiling-water-in-a-syringe technique, or any of several commercial removers.