mrdc
Active Member
About a year ago, my tank crashed and I am now just getting back into the hobby. I never broke the tank down but never added anything back to it like coral. The only thing that survived was my domino damsel, some hermit crabs and a fighting conch. I did monthly water changes but I was too frustrated to do much else. Not sure what happened but I don’t really want to get into that discussion. One of the things I did do while I was losing everything was remove a lot of rock. I had a ton of it and it could have been one source to my problem with not enough water flow getting through all the rocks especially in the back of the tank. Anyway, I put the rock in an 18g bucket and it sat outside for about 7 months. I arranged the remaining rock in the tank so that there are clear paths through the caves and I made sure that there is room in the back.
Now that the tank has been up for about a 2 months. I would like to add some of the rocks back in. The container has been outside exposed to all the elements and of course algae has grown all over the rocks. I took out about 10 pieces that I liked and scrubbed them down and placed them in a hot water / bleach solution. I let sit for about 3 days and then I took them out and ran them through water and then put them back into a bucket of water and put a couple of capfuls of prime in. The rock has been sitting in that solution for about a week since I currently wasn’t ready to add any new rock to my tank.
Now that my new lights have come in, I will soon be ready to add some of the rock. My questions are have I cleaned the rock the right way and how will I know if it is safe to put back into the tank? I always get scared when I use bleach so I want to make sure that the rock is safe. I might have done a killing overkill but any advice would be great.
Thanks.
Now that the tank has been up for about a 2 months. I would like to add some of the rocks back in. The container has been outside exposed to all the elements and of course algae has grown all over the rocks. I took out about 10 pieces that I liked and scrubbed them down and placed them in a hot water / bleach solution. I let sit for about 3 days and then I took them out and ran them through water and then put them back into a bucket of water and put a couple of capfuls of prime in. The rock has been sitting in that solution for about a week since I currently wasn’t ready to add any new rock to my tank.
Now that my new lights have come in, I will soon be ready to add some of the rock. My questions are have I cleaned the rock the right way and how will I know if it is safe to put back into the tank? I always get scared when I use bleach so I want to make sure that the rock is safe. I might have done a killing overkill but any advice would be great.
Thanks.
