Need help with old live rock

Vsrt17 · Sep 9, 2020

Tiki Reef Joshua said:
I would just spray it off with a hose, rinse with RO and cycle it with bacteria in my garage for 3weeks to a month.

After the bleach bath, can I cycle my new tank with it or do I still have to cure the rock?

Tiki Reef Joshua · Sep 9, 2020

I’m probably in the minority here so take my advice as you will. I think bleaching rock is silly. I just use water and scrub off the crap I see and let it brew for a good while in established water. I don’t sterilize everything, UV everything, add a bunch of stuff. Just not my approach. That said I also don’t add dry rock and start my tank. Not that it’s wrong. Certainly it isn’t. But I cycle my rocks for a while before starting the tank. Then I start with live, heavily rinsed (with water) sand.

shred5 · Sep 9, 2020

Tiki Reef Joshua said:
I’m probably in the minority here so take my advice as you will. I think bleaching rock is silly. I just use water and scrub off the crap I see and let it brew for a good while in established water. I don’t sterilize everything, UV everything, add a bunch of stuff. Just not my approach. That said I also don’t add dry rock and start my tank. Not that it’s wrong. Certainly it isn’t. But I cycle my rocks for a while before starting the tank. Then I start with live, heavily rinsed (with water) sand.

There is a difference between mined dry rock and dead live rock.

Problem with dead live rock is it can have tones of dead stuff in it like worms, algae, boring sponges etc. By bleaching it you dissolve all this quickly.

Do you have to do this step and just cycle it normally, sure you can.
It could take months of letting this decay, and can produce allot of organics through normal cycling. Some of it like phosphate can also bind to your rocks and release later. This is what causes that persistent cyno some see on their rocks. Not to mention it can stink really bad.

Now was this truly live rock from the ocean? That is a big difference between dead rock allot use now days which would have allot less organics in it. I think too few in the hobby actually have seen real live rock and what can actually be in and on it.