Cooking? some live rock- How long should it soak?

R

rsnoddy

I have been following a thread off of reefcentral that one of our members had linked to:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1587539&page=5

I have tried to follow thru it all but I seem to still have a question. I was hoping I might get some feedback here. I have done the chlorine soak followed by the dechlorinator soak. I have set them out to dry. I now have a 32 gallon trash can almost filled to the top with said live rock. I have poured approximately 1/4th of a gallon of 37% hydrochlorich acid on it to soak. The question is how long should I let it soak before I move it over to the baking soda bath to neutralize the acid. I want to make sure I let it sit long enough to kill all of the nasties but I don't want to let it sit too long and actually end up dissolving all of the rock.

Any input on the matter?

I also wanted to ask another quick question. The above mentioned reef central article only discusses cooking the live rock. It doesn't seem to make any mention of cleaning the other equipment we have in our tank for example the sumps plumbing, power heads, circulations pumps,skimmer, etc. Basically any other equipment that you might have in your tank (that isn't live rock) that you would like to give a good cleaning to as well. Would you stick your Mag 12 in the same acid bath you are cooking your rock in or would that be a BIG no no? I can soak it in some vinegar to try and get the calcium and such off but I want to get some feedback from the group as to whether or not they would think it would be a good or bad idea to put it in the acid solution.

Thanks for your time! I hope your having a great afternoon.
 
So just a quick update. It has been soaking since 2:00. I went out to take a look at it and it wasn't even bubbling. The other post I had seen showed pictures of brown sludge bubbling to the top. Since I didn't think I was getting the results I should be I went ahead and added a little more muratic acid. That seemed to get the bubbling going a little better. Still nothing dramatic. Maybe it just wasn't that bad to start with? I am going to let it continue to soak and see what it does. If I don't get any replies then I am going to probably go ahead and let it sit overnight and then move it over to the base solution to begin neutralizing in the morning.
 
This is what I did-
*Place rock in tub.
*Add enough rodi water to just barely cover rock
*Add power head to tub to get water circulating
*Add acid until it start bubbling
*let sit until the bubbling pretty much stops (30-45 minutes)
*Repeat the last 2 steps until you have gone through enough acid to make it about a 10:1 ratio (if you added 10g of water, use 1g of acid)
*Once you are out of acid and bubbling has stopped, add a cup of baking soda
*wait until bubbling has stopped and repeat
*Once adding baking soda does not cause bubbling, drain and rinse off rocks.
 
Agreed. Have some pics and details of what I did in my build log as well.

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Oh and on equipment I just use straight vinegar and let pumps run in vinegar for a few houra and then run them in the pool to get the vinegar off.

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Thanks Titus. That helps me a lot. So in a 32 gallon trash can minus the amount of water displaced by the rock I probably have a least 10 gallons of water in there. I have yet only used about 1/2 of the gallon of muratic acid. Still not very exciting results. I am going to go add the rest of the gallon and see what I get. You said you added a circulation pump to it so I take it that is would be safe to do so as well. I will go ahead and stick to vinegar for all of the rest of my equipment.

@ Mike - thanks for giving me some feedback as well. I had read your entire build thread trying to get more info on the process. I could be wrong but I think I got the link to the reefcentral article off of your thread.
 
No prob, couldn't remember if I had cooking time in there but I think I would check every half hour or so. Kust use the baking soda as a test to see if the acid is exhausted. I used 1 gallon of acid to about 10 gallons of water if I recall correctly.

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Thanks for the follow up Mike. I don't remember seeing cooking times in your thread but I might have simply overlooked it.

Status update:
So after adding the remainder of the gallon of muratic acid this morning I really got the results I was looking for! I guess my concentration just wasn't strong enough. LOTS of brown gunk overflowed my container. I let it sit for a couple of hours then went out to check on it. I added a little baking soda to see if the acid was spent and it was. I went ahead and added the remainder of the box of baking soda in hopes of fully neutralizing the acid. It is sitting with a power head on it mixing it up. I am going to go dump it when I get off of work and then rinse it all off. Then I will begin my second and last batch of rocks.
 
So I know how much everybody like to see photos so I thought I would add a few. Haven't done this in a while so let's see how this goes. Not sure if I need to "place inline" but this first attempt is simply adding them as an attachment.

Let's see how it goes.
 
So I noticed that a few of the rocks I removed from the first baking soda soak felt a little slimy. I am not sure if this is simply due to the fact that they may still have some residual baking soda left on them or possibly still some acid on them. I have put them into the second baking soda bath just to make sure it isn't residual acid.
 
The slime you feel could be dead algae or whatever that was underneath some top layers and is now exposed. I had some of that when I cooked my rock. At some point you have to stop and say, this is good enough, and maybe scrub off what you can as otherwise I think higher and higher acid concentrations would eventually dissolve the entire rock if it is made up of pure carbonate material.
 
Thanks for the feedback Mike! Reading the thread I can see how that last post might have been misleading. I did not place the slimy rocks into an additional acid bath I put them into an additional baking soda bath. I was trying to add the last two photos and I got a warning that I had no message so I decide to post my comment about the slimy rocks. The slimy rocks where the ones labeled "done with acid and first baking soda soak". I have put them into clean water with another box of baking soda. I figured what could it hurt. The pic of "cook baby cook" was me adding the rocks entitled "done with bleach ready for acid". I filled the 32 gallon trash can about half way full of water and added about 3/4 of a gallon of muratic acid. It was bubbling so violently that it almost overflowed the tub..

I agree with the this is enough statement. I think the second soda bath is probably overkill but all it cost me was water and a box of baking soda. I will give it a good scrub with my brush and maybe give it one more fresh water soak and be done with it.
 
I went through this process with my rock that was mostly 20-30 years old about 3 month ago. The LR was seeded and it is unbelievable how much has come back that was originally on rocks. I am talking some acans, zoas, sps, that have actually come back alive through that process. Unfortunately I had some red and some green shrooms that have also come back to life. I guess the DNA is there and eventually it will come back in the right conditions. Anyone else seeing similar results?
 
I had a severe case of bryopsis. It is totally gone and I have seen no signs of its return. Corraline is coming back!!
 
Negative on anything coming back. There were remnants of some zoas on a rock but I scrubbed those off after the first acid wash failed to remove them by getting under all of them. Acid washed again and I have had nothing return from the rocks that went through the bleach, dry, acid wash, dry, process.
 
@shse666 wrote:
I wonder what the "shrinkage" is due to this process? IE said:
interesting question. There must be some if the process is doing what is intended, but the % would vary between batches and the person performing the soak based on the time and acid ratio of the soak.
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