Do i have to acid bath Eco rock? (1 Viewer)

[Shigo_Naito]

I am getting my new tank setup and i am currently curing some live rock and i am about to buy some Eco rock.

Can i just put the Eco rock with the half cured rock in the tank?
Would it just take longer for the tank to level off?
Dose Eco rock have any chemical that i should worry about?

Thanks for the help,
Chris

 

[RaysReef]

they have no chemicals...but do have tons and tons of dead bacteria and will stink up your tank...I would recommend an acid bath. It can also spike your phosphates and Ammonia levels...If your adding it to an established tank, be very careful...100% acid bath Rinse well and put into your tank...No need to cure because there isn't anything to cure, but its good to soak it in SW with a protein skimmer...I noticed it added about 15-20% weight to it...(water weight added) to the Eco Rocks...

+1 for great size Rocks! just gotta take a few more steps before u put it in your tank

 

[Shigo_Naito]

If its not an established tank would it matter just rincing it and then putting it in the tank?

 

[RaysReef]

that's up to u...I did a completely new setup and my skimmer was working hard...I soaked and rinse 80% of my eco rox...and rinsed the 20% and threw it all in the tank and 1st impression...It's still dirty after 3-4wks of soaking and rinsing

Water turned Brown and ever smell a dead LR? that's how it was...with wet socks

Ran the skimmer for 3-4 days straight...and still did 2 water change to get it to clear up...overall it was another 2 wks before adding in LR to seed it..

If i had to do it over again, I'd do an acid bath..soaking, rinsing, and water changes can't extract out all the dead organisms that has really been baked on by mother nature...

 

[mrbill]

I set up a frag tank using Eco rock that I just rinsed. That was about 9 months ago and it still grows algae like crazy. I used RO and I have never added any food to the tank, all thats in it so far is some Xenia because I am going to break it down and acid wash the rock. I am using Eco rock again for my new tank but last weekend I acid washed it. It was easy, I did it inside the house using a couple of 5 gal buckets. I soaked the dry rock in fresh water for about a week before the acid treatment and it may have helped because I didn't have any bad smells during the acid wash. I did small batches at a time with only about half the bucket full of rock and water. This helped keep the foam in the bucket. Keep a scoop handy and another empty bucket so you can skim some of the foam off if it threatens to spill over. One of the reasons I soaked the rock so long was that I really wasn't looking forward to doing the acid wash so I kept putting it off. It turned out to be no big deal and I'm sure its well worth it.

 

[RaysReef]

Usually you want to do the bath outside...It can stink up and foam up over the bucket. Checkout Chad's section on acid bath...He put some great examples with PICS! I also had tons of algae hair...Due to all the dead nutrients (Can cause high Phos, Ammonia) that was still latched on the rox