Curing BRS Dry Pukani in a New DT

[ReeferRoo]

@Idoc

I checked my build thread, Post 25 kicks of what I did with some pictures.

 

[Rob77]

So you all scared me with curing the BRS Pukan in tank without any prep...

last week I ended up doing the muriatic acid bath and a bleach soak...updated in my build thread...

see here... ReeferRoo's Custom 125 (My First Tank)

here are some Lessons learned -

Good decisions...

1. Uniseals are friggin awesome!!! If your going to do this, buy a 3/4" uniseal, use a 3/4" pvc scrap of pipe, and a cheap home depot 3/4" ball valve and the system wont leak and its wicked easy to drain.
I think i drilled a 1-1/8" hole for the uniseal. If anyone wants to know for sure i can check the drill bit.

2. Did it on a windy day so smell was nearly nonexistent

Bad ideas...

1. Did it on a windy day, foam was flying everywhere for a good 45 min to an hour

Overall not a bad experience....I would definitely do again, maybe even use more acid next time if these successfully reduces my phosphate leaching.

Used 2 gallons of muriatic acid to about 30 gallons of water, poured 1 gallon of acid by each of the 2 power heads. in phases.

used 1.5 gallons of bleach when i did the bleaching phase to the same amount of water.

How long did it take for the phosphate to drop and how low did it go?

Good info! I am also using Pukani rock and my tank is cycling now. I actually cured my Pukani for about 6 weeks in freshwater just to break down the majority of the organic materials in the rock...then let it all dry out again (planned on working several dry aquascaping ideas). I think I should have kept the cure going for much longer! I've been testing my parameters during my cycle and I'm running around 0.14 phosphate (Hanna checker) and my nitrates are through the roof...probably over 100 now! I'm only about 2 weeks into the cycle! I'm concerned that maybe I need to do something during the cycle to control the nitrates...I can always throw in a small bag of Phosguard to control the phosphates. So far, algae hasn't shown in the tank! But, with those parameters, I think I'm just asking for a huge outbreak (beyond the regular uglies with a new tank) soon!

 

[Rob77]

my worries too!

 

[Rob77]

Took a while for Algae to show in my tank, now starting to get little cropping of purple corraline, plenty of gray/green for some time now. I had a red cyano issue for a while after I started to add live stock, I did some research and just added Korallen-Zucht- Coral Snow and Korallen-Zucht-Phol's Coral Vitalizer which both complete for the nutrients that Cyano metabolizes, cleaned it out in 1 week give or take a day or two. Haven't seen any cyano since. I have brown algae on my tank walls but my inverts keep up on it, especially my tuxedo urchin, (added some rubble rock that clearly had some organic matter and phosphates that have been leaching.

I think the other thing that helped me is my system is pretty high flow, I have never had a nusiance algae outbreak anywhere but on some of the back walls where the return jets or power heads are not blowing on or in the refugium in the sump (usually the worst spot), Although I added an urchin down there along with 2 nuisance male mithrax (Emerald Crabs) and they keep it fairly spotless now, need to move the urchin to the DT to help clean walls, over feeding lately and dealing with some Nitrate and Phosphates feeding algae but no impact on the corals.

I would guess a 6 week cure probably wasn't long enough, I have heard of people going 8-12 weeks and longer with Pukani. Think I even read about people going 6 months and still battling with Phosphates without doing the acid bath and bleaching which is what ultimately broke me down to do the acid bath and bleach.

My tank went wet and started it's cycle In late April or Early may this year, so the photos above are since then and have been able to successfully have polyp extension and coral growth on every piece in the tank.

I would almost recommend stopping and doing the acid and bleach bath because you really dont know what is left in the core of your Pukani Rocks. I pushed it off for a long time afraid of messing it up or hurting myself, in the end, I would do it every time now, even for the rubble rock I use for various things in the tank, and with every type of rock in the future. So easy and as long as you respect the acid you will be fine.

I think my build thread below has my actual experience, I will check after this post and if not, I will post the thread that does.

1. Buy a large sturdy rubbermaid tub, a 3/4" uniseal, and necessary 3/4" pipe section and valve, muriatic acid (Volume based on how big the tub is), Rubber gloves, goggles, and a face mask/respirator (something to help with the fumes), Plain Bleach 1-2 gallons, and some Seachem Prime.
2. If you have a cheap power head add it to the tub to help circulation, I used 2 Hydor 1950 power heads.
3. Throw your rock in the tub, fill up with garden hose water outside in a safe open air spot where you don't mind killing the grass when you drain it on a mildly breezy day
4. Add the muratic acid, I added a couple of times, each time the muriatic acid reacts with the top layer of Calcium Carbonate on the Rock and eats it away pulling away and degrading the organic matter as well, you will know when the muriatic acid is neutralized as the bubbling/frothing will stop.
5. Drain the tub through the uniseal valve. When almost empty just rinse with garden hose water. Move the rocks around, if you have a pressure washer then use that as well.
6. Clean the tub of residue organic matter.
7. Put rock back in tub (Again outside in a clear and well ventilated area)
8. Add Bleach and let powerheads circulate the water, let stand for 24 hours.
9. Drain bleach water and rinse with garden hose water again.
10. Refill with garden hose water, double or even tripple dose or more with seachem prime, it's cheap and effective at neutralizing chlorine.
11. After 24 hours Prime is inert, take out the rock and lay out in the sun. (When I did it, it was still 30-40 degrees outside so I just let is air dry in my garage with a fan on it for 4-5 days).

After that I worked my aqua-scaping in a dry environment and added it to the tank. Filled the tank with RODI water once, Drained again to help export some of the junk that may have been in my tap water, Added dry sand and mixed the salt in tank through the return chamber in my sump. Once salinity was 1.026 and it ran for a day or two I added the recommended dosages of Bio-Spira with some extra, 24 hours later I added like 5 ML of Pure Ammonia, 2 weeks later I showed 0,0,0. Added another 5 ML of pure ammonia, 24 hours later showed something like 0,.1,.25, a few days later 0,0,0 again with something like .17 phosphate, added the High Capacity GFO, Phosphates were below .03. Did a 40% water change and shortly after added my first inverts (10 emeralds (Mithrax), 10 Blue Hermits, 10 Red Hermits, something like 40 snails) fed them some invert food for 2 weeks, parameters stayed at 0,0,0-15, bought my first zoas and clove poly coral, they survived 2 weeks, then stated adding everything else, Reef-A-Palooza came and added like 14 Frags ($600) to the tank and everything has done great since, probably added another $1,400 in corals including, Softies (Zoas/Palys/Rhicordea/Yuma), LPS (Favias, Acans (Assuie/Lords/Micro)/Euphyllia/Echinata/Chalices/Duncans/Leptos), LPS (Birdsnests, Acroporas, Montiporas (Undata's/Digi's/Plating) and even 1 NPS Sun Coral since, plus 5 fish, 2 sand sifting stars, 1 reef lobster, 1 pistol shrimp, 3 urchins, more hermits and a quad color BTA. Everything is doing great!

I can't promise your cycle will go as quick but by doing the above it should lessen your troubles and maybe mitigate it down to just dealing with some phosphate leaching which is totally manageable. I will admit my cycle was very fast.

I will also admit I took advice and information from various sources when I did the acid and bleach baths as there was no particular write up for it beyond various peoples experience. I will have to ask the Reef2Reef team if they would let me submit an article with photos and step by step as I recently purchased some additional Pukani that I will be doing the process on soon.

I actually did acid and bleached after .........my phos with hanna ulr is at .107 or so seems to be dropping .......last week I dosed phos rx with the 10 micron filter sock Ive since removed ,,,,,,, just for giggles last night I checked nitrate with salifert and I am actually at 10ppm haha didnt really want to start a cycle during this time .....guess it just happened

 

[ReeferRoo]

Running GFO can pull them out as well. I was at .17 as soon as i went wet after the acid bath. hooked up the GFO reactor and was .03 which is tolerable to start stocking. Within 2 weeks GFO has been pumping out 0 phosphates. So basically keeping up with whatever the pukani was still leaching out.

 

[Rob77]

Running GFO can pull them out as well. I was at .17 as soon as i went wet after the acid bath. hooked up the GFO reactor and was .03 which is tolerable to start stocking. Within 2 weeks GFO has been pumping out 0 phosphates. So basically keeping up with whatever the pukani was still leaching out.

guess as bad as I dont want to !!!!! I will get the gfo running .......I do like phos rx since I have no livestock but Just still have to wonder is all thats binded up making it out

 

[Rob77]

guess as bad as I dont want to !!!!! I will get the gfo running .......I do like phos rx since I have no livestock but Just still have to wonder is all thats binded up making it out

hahaha bound even

 

[Tautog]

Fwiw, I purchased shelf rock from BRS in January, soaked it in a rubber garbage pail with heat and circulating pump for 6 weeks, covered. I used the tank water from a WC. Every 2 weeks I do WC's, so I would empty the pail of water soaking the rock, then refill with the WC water from the tank. This worked great, and didn't have to spend extra money on extra water. After 3 weeks in the DT, Coraline covered my shelf rock. I never had a spike in anything, no PO4's or No3's

 

[Rob77]

Fwiw, I purchased shelf rock from BRS in January, soaked it in a rubber garbage pail with heat and circulating pump for 6 weeks, covered. I used the tank water from a WC. Every 2 weeks I do WC's, so I would empty the pail of water soaking the rock, then refill with the WC water from the tank. This worked great, and didn't have to spend extra money on extra water. After 3 weeks in the DT, Coraline covered my shelf rock. I never had a spike in anything, no PO4's or No3's

If I could go back in time I would do this for a year or 3 !!!!!!!!! Imjust worried about issues but i love the rock

 

[Rob77]

I do thank you all on your advice ...... Im so glad I joined R2R

 

[ReeferRoo]

Fwiw, I purchased shelf rock from BRS in January, soaked it in a rubber garbage pail with heat and circulating pump for 6 weeks, covered. I used the tank water from a WC. Every 2 weeks I do WC's, so I would empty the pail of water soaking the rock, then refill with the WC water from the tank. This worked great, and didn't have to spend extra money on extra water. After 3 weeks in the DT, Coraline covered my shelf rock. I never had a spike in anything, no PO4's or No3's

I bought some BRS shelf rock as well, much cleaner than Pukani. Punaki is light for its size and tons of nooks and cranny's where larger organisms can get into and unfortunately died. My last rinse with a pressure washer I pulled out a large re hydrated slug or something. It wasn't there when I started but it swelled and filled a lot of voids afterwards and I was shocked that the acid and the bleach didn't disintegrate it.

I threw some shelf rock in an invert QT and had no phosphate issues.

Pukani in my opinion is the best looking rock, and everything else is great for accent. Again, that is just my personal opinion, I have seen many beautiful tanks using other rocks as well.

However Pukani is also the dirtiest rock you can get and takes the longest to cure if you just dunk it and by far the most labor intensive to prep if you want to reduce the cure time.

 

[Tautog]

I bought some BRS shelf rock as well, much cleaner than Pukani. Punaki is light for its size and tons of nooks and cranny's where larger organisms can get into and unfortunately died. My last rinse with a pressure washer I pulled out a large re hydrated slug or something. It wasn't there when I started but it swelled and filled a lot of voids afterwards and I was shocked that the acid and the bleach didn't disintegrate it.

I threw some shelf rock in an invert QT and had no phosphate issues.

Pukani in my opinion is the best looking rock, and everything else is great for accent. Again, that is just my personal opinion, I have seen many beautiful tanks using other rocks as well.

However Pukani is also the dirtiest rock you can get and takes the longest to cure if you just dunk it and by far the most labor intensive to prep if you want to reduce the cure time.

I wonder if you would just drop that Pukani rock in boiling water, and you could add bleach, then everything would come out or disintegrate. Boiling water would expand everything. I had some shells and old corals in my garden for 20-25 yrs, they were in my first tank from years ago, but I boiled them with bleach for an hour or two, then soaked in fresh water, and finally Sun-dried for a week. I started with all Live Rock, but added these pieces soon after. Funny right? But when I added these pieces all the fish hung out in these boiled pieces, NOT the LR. That never made any sense to me! I'm guessing the answer could only be :" Welcome to the hobby!"

 

[Whispers]

I’m curing my BRS Pukani rock like your original plan in my DT (RS reefer xxl750) I had a little smell and a yellow tint after the 2nd day so I added some rowa to a reactor the system has been running for a week in RODI salt water. No bacteria or sand yett . Water has no smell and is pretty clear my phos went from .48 to .29

 

[ReeferRoo]

I’m curing my BRS Pukani rock like your original plan in my DT (RS reefer xxl750) I had a little smell and a yellow tint after the 2nd day so I added some rowa to a reactor the system has been running for a week in RODI salt water. No bacteria or sand yett . Water has no smell and is pretty clear my phos went from .48 to .29

Thats awesome! Would love to see you final results.

 

[Mark Gray]

I guess I am sort of old school I cure mine in the tank, I like to get my scape the way I like it glue it dry then I know it will stay where I put it. I change some water my last tank was 100% Pukani, my next build will have some Fiji shelf in it but I will do the same. I had some algae for a little while but I waited for about 6 months and stated my Fuge and the Algae went away .

 

[ReeferRoo]

I guess I am sort of old school I cure mine in the tank, I like to get my scape the way I like it glue it dry then I know it will stay where I put it. I change some water my last tank was 100% Pukani, my next build will have some Fiji shelf in it but I will do the same. I had some algae for a little while but I waited for about 6 months and stated my Fuge and the Algae went away .

I had just gotten scared with the cure in tank, couldn’t find enough info out there. In the end i had about 2-3 x more rock than I needed for the build so after the acid bath prep and the rock dried for a week I built my aquascape and set it in tank. Just meant the cycle process was faster:

 

[Whispers]

My tank has been running 3 weeks and 3 days on the third week I added the live sand and a couple of bottles of live bacteria and my phos are .08 0 ammonia and I have some nitrates so I think I’m almost done with the cycle