Reusing Rock ?

[MadReefer]

I have two rocks that had bad hair algae last year in July. I scrubbed them best I could, stuck them in a plastic bag and stored them in the shed. DO you think I can use them with getting another HA outbreak? I was going to blast them with a pressure hose to get any gunk out of them.

Thanks,
Mark

 

[ricwilli]

You will still need to cure it. Stick the in a container with salt water, heater and a pump. Do a couple of water changes and your done. Make sure you have no nitrates.

 

[Whitebird1]

I jump start the process by putting it a pail with salt water, add detritus siphoned off the bottom of the tank, add skim mate from the skimmer cup, let that sit a week, use a power head, heater if you want too. After a week or so, when you do a water change, replace the old pail water with that. You should have a ammonia spike, when that spike goes down, yer done. One other way to tell if its cured and alive, smell the rock, stinks, rotten egg, not cured, little smell like the sea its done. This can take a few weeks or longer.
Trick, once you thinks its almost cured, add more detritus, sump sand works good, add some cheatoe, scrape some Coraline algae off a cured rock, add a light source, plain energy saver bulb=65 watts. The critters from the sand will colonize the rock, pods, stars, ect. The Coraline should color up, and the cheatoe should feed on the nitrates and add more pods.
If you are going to add it to a exiting system, the longer it sits in that situation, the better, and add pieces slowly, so if its not fully cured or some of the new life dies off, your system can absorb any ammonia.
I keep a ten gal running just for this purpose, works great.
Greg
Last note, neat trick, before you cure it, soak it a day, then take a drill with a drill bit just a tad larger than the frag plug stems commonly used and drill the heck out of the rock, make swiss cheese, it makes the rock have much more surface area and is real handy to place frags with the opportunity to move the frags till you think you have the landscaping the way you want it and everything is happy where its at.
(I never reached that point, good luck)