Curing live ocean rock

[valley]

Hello, I'm in the process of setting up my 60 gallon breeder tank. I received my live rock from kp aquatics yesterday and left it in a bin to cure for about 12 hours while I filled up my display. It was shipped overnight to my door in wet paper. There was some die off but the rock didn’t have a bad odor and smelled like the ocean.

During that time, the water in the bin started to progressively smell bad. I then put the rock in my display tank once it was ready and I found some more die off at the bottom of the bin. It wasn’t much other than some worms and crabs.

It's now been less than 12 hours that the rock is in the display tank and it's also starting to smell bad there too. It doesn’t smell rotten but more like a dirty beach. I tested for ammonia and nitrite and got .8 ammonia and 0 nitrite.

Flow in the display tank isn't the best since I only have one power head on one side at 1200gph. I just put a 200gph return pump on the other side to make up for that. I'm using a 200w heater on one side of the tank and it's not heating up the tank too well. Water is sitting at around 76°.

Anything I should do or do I just have to wait? I'm seeing online that I should do a water change once ammonia is at 5 or once it’s been a week.

 

[KrisReef]

The smell is the die off of stuff on the rock that cant/didn't survive the long dry trip from the ocean to your doorstep. We used to recommend that people remove any sponges and trim/remove any macroalgaes to reduce things that were likely to rot after transport.

The wait for the rock to finish "dying" is the most difficult time for folks who are eager to set up their tanks. How long will it take for your tank wont be know until after its over. Be calm, change water to improve the survivor ship potential of stuff in/on the rocks or just let it cook, with things dying because of the rot and the cascade continuing until it is done. Handle it like you want to. The rock already has plenty of bacteria to handle a fish load but it needs to "cure" and quit stinking before it is safe to add fish. I don't think I would even bother to test ammonia and nitrates for a week, or the day after a water change if I did one. The process always works no matter what the readings are today, given circulation, warmth, and time needed for the processes to stabilize.

I would leave the lights off. Except; I have put fresh live rock into an already established reef when corals were present on the liverock and I wanted to keep them alive if I could. Often that doesn't work but it can. HTH.