How To Properly Cure Live Rock?

[spanish dancer]

Recently I have been doing research regarding how to cure live rock. I have found many answers, but many of them are conflicting, for example, Some sources say that lights should be on during the curing, and some say there should be no light at all! I also do not understand if Iam supposed to do water changes or not. I thought it would be necessary to do the changes, in the fact that it would reduce the level of nutrients in the water, causing less algae to grow. Of course, that would not be a problem if lights were not used during the process of curing in the first place
Any information regaring which methods are better will be greatly appreciated, and please share your personal experiences on this topic. :thinking:

 

[fishrule]

All I know is, my LFS keeps lights on in their Curing Tanks... Not sure if they know for sure what they are doing either... The lights are regular florescent fixtures. Not sure if that means anything.

 

[spanish dancer]

Yeah, at my LFS, they too use flourescent lighting on their curing tanks, but I think it may be because they make their own live rock by adding dry rock to it. In fact, I don't think they have added any fresh live rock in quite some time.
I also forgot to ask, should I "scrub down" my live rock before placing it in the tank like my LFS says? I don't think I can trust them when it comes to this subject. Thanks

 

[mr_bill]

Originally Posted by Spanish Dancer
I also forgot to ask, should I "scrub down" my live rock before placing it in the tank like my LFS says? I don't think I can trust them when it comes to this subject. Thanks
Yes, unless you get a piece of cured rock that you pull from a display tank that has good things on it you want to keep. Even bins with so called "cured" rock around here I take a brush to before rinsing. You'll usually get some dead sponge or plant that you'll want to pull off for sure before adding the rock.
Try to schedule rock buying with water changes, and use the old water to rinse and scrub the new rock with.

 

[fishrule]

Originally Posted by Mr_Bill
Yes, unless you get a piece of cured rock that you pull from a display tank that has good things on it you want to keep. Even bins with so called "cured" rock around here I take a brush to before rinsing. You'll usually get some dead sponge or plant that you'll want to pull off for sure before adding the rock.
Try to schedule rock buying with water changes, and use the old water to rinse and scrub the new rock with.
I never even thought about scrubbing the rock again...
I think I will use the water changes idea from now on... :joy:

 

[navarcus]

Well I cycled my75 gallon tank with 75lbs of uncured rock to start. Like you I was confused how to do things. I scrubbed and pulled all of the stuff that was squishy or dead off and then I put the rocks in the tank, this polluted the water and I had a stinky tank for about 2 weeks even with water changes. I kept an eye on the amonia spike which went rocketing and did water changes of about 20 gallons twicea week for 2 weeks. Much of the life on the rock died off and alot of the coraline algea on the rock bleached out. Possibly from amonia? I didn't get an algea bloom until the end of the cycle and I kept lights on my tank on during the day. I've just been doing water changes with ro/di water like crazy since and I don't have the brown algea anymore.

After going through the cycle in my tank I got 25lbs more liverock that I cured MUCH faster in a rubbermaid plastic bin. I did water changes every day for a week and I was able to scrub the rock every day and continue taking of decaying stuff...I couldn't do this in my tank because it would pollute the water too much. I was able to preserve the coraline algea on the rock much better and the rocks "cured" much faster without the stench.

If I could do it all over again I would have put a couple of the rocks in the tank to cycle with and cured the rest in a bin. This way I could change water out every day and scrub rocks everyday. This would have minimized the amonia in the tank and the mess of dead decaying mater left over in the tank.not to mention 50% water changes in a 75 gal tank can be tedious and killer on the back!!

 

[mr_bill]

Originally Posted by FishRule
I never even thought about scrubbing the rock again...
I think I will use the water changes idea from now on... :joy:
Funny thing about when they "cure" rock around here. They don't really scrub it most of the time to begin with, so sometimes when I do my little once over I find areas of the rock with a hard surface but mushy insides. I don't think it would cause a problem unless something in my tank actually punctured that area, but I don't wanna take the chance.

 

[mudplayerx]

I've always scrubbed my new live rock VERY thouroughly and manually removed EVERYTHING before putting it into the tank. I've actually added 20 pounds to a 55 gallon tank after doing this and got no spike in ammonia. It's best to cure it in its own container though.