how long should this rock take?

[treesprite]

Phosphate already down before I did water change, and right after I tested it, I changed the water so it must be lower even than that. But there is a discrepancy in the color of the reference sample compared to the color chart, of at minimum about .5 which may mean that the PO4 was only about 1.0. In turn, that means today's pre-water change result would be about .5 . Now it has to be lower than that because of the 90% water change, but just the rock in the water will probably raise it again.

 

I had dumped that pH Down stuff in and today the pH was back up to 7.8 from about 6.6. I did the water change and instead of that, dumped in about a cup of vinegar.

[davelin315]

Forrest, I am curious as to why you are resorting to so many chemicals and water changes when you are cycling your rock? Personally, I am a believer in no water changes and letting the rock adjust to the water so that the appropriate bacteria grows - the water changes stunt this process.

[treesprite]

I am not concerned about getting bacteria to grow, since it is not a new tank and there is plenty of needed bacteria in the liverock in the sump to support the tank. I wanted stuff off of the rock so my goal was to get it off, and that goal has been accomplished.

 

The nitrogen cycle is done. I'm dealing with phosphate, and my new goal is to make sure that there won't be any phosphate leeching from entrapment in the rock into my DT water. Everything living on/in the rock is long dead, so whatever I am doing is not going to hurt anything.

 

Water changes provide a means by which to determine whether or not anything is leeching from the rock (testing the water). The water changes themselves will not get rid of any phosphate that may be somehow trapped up in the rock unless any that is trapped in the rock is released somehow.

 

The idea of "unbinding" phosphate so it can be removed by water changes is interesting enough to deserve some  attention. The pH has to be dropped for the unbinding, and water can't drop its pH on it's own, hence dumping stuff into it. If any bound phosphate is unbound, then the water changes are needed so that the rock isn't sitting in phosphate saturated water for that phosphate to bind back up again when the pH goes back up. If I do accomplish such a thing, then theoretically doing so will help prevent some future pH drop in the tank  from releasing such bound type of phosphate into the DT water. Of course it is most likely that I will not be able to determine with any certainty that I have accomplished anything at all other than having a lower phosphate reading which itself won't explain the process by which it came about.

 

When I'm done playing with chemistry, my 3rd goal will be to play with arrangements for aquascaping, while the rock is still free of lifeforms so I won;t have to worry about anything dying by me leaving it out of the water while I play with it, which will also let me have some time for epoxy to dry if I use it. I am REALLY looking forward to playing with the rock.

Edited June 6, 2014 by treesprite

[zygote2k]

what she said.

[treesprite]

Thanks, Rob. I'm glad I finally figured out what I'm going well enough to write it down in a way that makes some sense.

[davelin315]

If that's the case - and it seems to contradict what you were saying at the beginning of the post - why not just do it in tap water?  Throw in some bleach, dissolve all of the organics, dechlorinate it, run it through a quick acid bath and then rinse it and repeat until your phosphates show at zero.  There's no reason to use saltwater if you're not establishing a bacteria population in the rock and are only looking to get "clean" rock.  With trying to test ammonia and waiting for the nitrogen cycle to finish off you're growing bacteria and if you're attempting to remove phosphates then I would think you'd also want to have biological measures for removing it once you have removed whatever has been leeching back into your system.  From the outside looking in, your last post indicates that you're looking to have rock that is completely devoid of any life and organics so that you can stick it in your system without fear of introducing nutrients so the easiest way to do it is to kill off all of the rock.  You mentioned back on the first page that you were looking to do it at the lowest salinity possible, so if your goal is to simply have it be clean, use completely fresh water and no salt.

[AlanM]

I think she wants fully cycled rock, with bacteria, but no pests and no phosphate or nitrate. Fresh water wouldn't leave her with saltwater cycled rock.

 

Forrest, maybe stop by a pool store and get some lanthanum chloride to dump in to the water? Proven phosphate eliminator. It precipitates out permanently. It causes problems in tanks because the precipitate is such a fine powder that it irritates fish and corals if it isn't filtered out, but large public aquariums use it to lower phosphate, from what I've heard.

[treesprite]

I think she wants fully cycled rock, with bacteria, but no pests and no phosphate or nitrate. Fresh water wouldn't leave her with saltwater cycled rock.

 

Forrest, maybe stop by a pool store and get some lanthanum chloride to dump in to the water? Proven phosphate eliminator. It precipitates out permanently. It causes problems in tanks because the precipitate is such a fine powder that it irritates fish and corals if it isn't filtered out, but large public aquariums use it to lower phosphate, from what I've heard.

 

Yep, that's what I want.

 

That stuff sounds too risky. I'm actually not feeling so bad about the phosphate now that I have discovered the discrepancy in the test kit's reference sample vs the color chart. The phosphate is lower than I thought it was.

[treesprite]

Nitrate is undetectable - that's a very nice discovery.

 

As far as phosphate goes, I decided to forget interpreting the colors on the card and just do simultaneous testing of rock water and DT water. It would seem to me that as long as it matches or the rock water is lower, no extra phosphate will get added to the tank by putting the rock in it.

 

I did a rock water change a week ago and just left things go on their own until today. Before the water change, the water  was bacteria cloudy because of the vinegar - if I ever try this again, I'm sticking to a pH reducer additive. It also had some kind of brown tiny dirt-looking particles in it. I changed about 90% of the water with clean 1.025, and did not add anything to it

 

I should have rinsed the rock off. The phosphate today was still a bit higher than the tank, but those "dirt" particles are still in the water and may have affected the test result (the particles were actually in the water sample, because there was no way to avoid them). SO I will rinse off the rock when I do a water change this time, and test again in a couple or few days.

 

I really wanted to start playing with arrangements today. Oh well :(

[jaddc]

Nitrate is undetectable - that's a very nice discovery.

 

As far as phosphate goes, I decided to forget interpreting the colors on the card and just do simultaneous testing of rock water and DT water. It would seem to me that as long as it matches or the rock water is lower, no extra phosphate will get added to the tank by putting the rock in it.

 

I did a rock water change a week ago and just left things go on their own until today. Before the water change, the water  was bacteria cloudy because of the vinegar - if I ever try this again, I'm sticking to a pH reducer additive. It also had some kind of brown tiny dirt-looking particles in it. I changed about 90% of the water with clean 1.025, and did not add anything to it

 

I should have rinsed the rock off. The phosphate today was still a bit higher than the tank, but those "dirt" particles are still in the water and may have affected the test result (the particles were actually in the water sample, because there was no way to avoid them). SO I will rinse off the rock when I do a water change this time, and test again in a couple or few days.

 

I really wanted to start playing with arrangements today. Oh well :(

 

The bacteria wasn't a bad thing because that consumed a lot of the nitrates and phosphates and probably was the chief reason why your nitrates were undetectable.

 

I don't know if you have done this already, but you can definitely rinse the rock in just tap water. After you are done just do a final rinse in RODI water to remove the water impurities before you put it into the saltwater.

[treesprite]

The good news is, my display tank water's phosphate level is now low enough that I can't determine it by the color chart. I am assuming it is mostly because I increased vinegar dosing.

 

The bad news is that the rock water phosphate is still too high for me to be ready to put it in my display tank. I figured if the level in the rock water was at least as low as in the DT, it would be ok to put the rock in. But now that the DT phosphate level is so low, that notion is out the window.

 

I tried to believe that the phosphate level would go down without any further messing around. I haven't had time to do any playing with it for almost 2 weeks, at which time I rinsed all the pieces of rock off in water change water from the display tank, and did a 100% rock water change with newly made salt water.

 

I am not going to bother changing the rock water today. I put a bag of phosphate remover in the path of a powerhead and will see what happens. The canister of Kent stuff, surprisingly, says it can reduce phosphate in a matter of hours, so while I do not believe it can do so to any significant extent, I'm going to test it in a few hours with the wishful thinking that it will happen.

 

It has been like 6 weeks already. Time is so limited that I would not have had a chance to play with the rock and get it in the tank anyway, but I am getting bored looking at the tank with such a limited amount of rock in it (it's the dry rock I got from Tropical Lagoon, most of which I built into a  structure roughly 15" high with an archway about 10" high so the tang has something significantly large through which to navigate; I like the structure, I just don't know how it will "fit in" when I get the cooking stuff back in the tank given that it is a bit tall... any corals that grow on top won't be able to grow more than about 5" tall).

 

I'm sure you all will be thrilled with my next update.

Edited July 5, 2014 by treesprite

[treesprite]

I just spent 7 hours aquascaping my tank.  My carpel tunnel is acting up, I have clownfish bites on my hand, a few hammer coral stings, expoxy on my fingers that I couldn't wash off, and a back ache.

 

The answer to how long the rock will take, is "a long time". I had ended up putting a skimmer on it and dosing vinegar at about 5 times the typical dose amount. I should have done it to begin with, but took other people's word for it that the skimmer wasn't necessary.

Edited August 1, 2014 by treesprite