Live rock- soaked in bleach...help

Swilford · 05-13-2008, 12:02 PM

Good day. My father in law was trying to help me... I am downsizing my saltwater tank and was not able to fit all of my live rock into he new tank. Trying to help me my father in law put my extra live rock into a bucket of bleach water. Is my LR now ruined? I was planning on selling my extra LR...
Thanks in advance for any help!

unclejed · 05-13-2008, 12:28 PM

Sorry but it is in effect dead now. You can bring it back by setting up the tank you downsized from as a culturing tank. After you are done with it use it to put the bleached rock in (hopefully you still have aquarium water in there) if not then make up a batch of water, enough to cover all the rock completely, at a SG of .021 and keep at 75-80 degrees with a small power head for circulation. Add double the live bacteria that the bottle calls for and add the rock. If you have substrate in there, all the better, if not take some from the other tank to help seed the rock. The combo of old established bacteria and fresh new should kick things into gear as they say. After say 2 weeks add a light to the tank and dose with Calcium until you reach 400-450 ppm. This will encourage Coraline growth if that is what you are after as far as selling it.

Swilford · 05-13-2008, 01:36 PM

Thank you very much.... Do you think i could add this rock to a fresh tank instead?

unclejed · 05-13-2008, 02:40 PM

Do you mean convert the fresh to salt? The water must be salt water.

Swilford · 05-13-2008, 03:00 PM

I was thinking.... put the LR (which is now dead) into a fresh tank. Or will the rocks hurt the fresh water?

MeadowSky · 05-13-2008, 03:12 PM

I would seriously consider not using it at all. You would need to rinse that stuff like there is no tomarrow. As porous and holey as live rock is there could be traces of bleach in it that would be hard to remove.

Swilford · 05-13-2008, 03:55 PM

Okay :-) Here's to an expensive rock garden! Thank you for your help