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Old June 26th, 2007, 12:54 PM
MyBirdIsEvil's Avatar
MyBirdIsEvil MyBirdIsEvil is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Missouri
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sorry!!

so with LR, is there a way to cure it to save as many of the organisms as possible?? i would think that it would be better to cure (as nasty and stinkey as it is) yourself to ensure you save as many of the cool (and even not so cool) things on it. i mean, how can an octopus survive curing LR?? would something like Bio-Spira help the curing process??

(can you tell i have some huge blanks?? heh)
Ok, just a preface. When most large SW stores cure liverocks they're doing it large pools with very large skimmers. They get liverock shipped in and of course that liverock will have some die-off because not all the organisms are going to survive being shipped. No matter who is shipping the liverock you will have some die off. The skimmers remove all the waste that's caused by the die off on the rock, there will ALWAYS be some die off because obviously the rock will be out of water for some amount of time, and some organisms just can't survive that.

All curing is is waiting until that die off has completed and until the waste from the die off has been processed by your nitrifying bacteria and taken out by a skimmer. Once the water that the liverock is in shows no ammonia or nitrites for an extended period of time the liverock is "cured".

Small amounts of liverock can also be cured by yourself in any container with powerheads and saltwater by doing water changes to remove the waste. Much like cycling a tank you monitor the ammonia, do water changes periodically and wait until nitrites and ammonia have disappeared. In fact you can cycle a tank with liverock. I wouldn't do this with completely fresh uncured liverock because you'd have A LOT of waste, and I really wouldn't wanna deal with that in the actual tank, but when you buy liverock at the store that has been cleared of most dead organisms, you can put it in your tank, monitor ammonia/nitrites, keep doing water changes and wait until your liverock is cured. Cured liverock is basically like a cycled tank.

(Sorry, some of this you may already know, hopefully this wasn't too complicated or confusing for anyone new)

Is there a way to cure it to save as many of the organisms as possible? Other than a large skimmer, I dunno. You're always going to end up with waste in your water depending on the level of die off. Fully cured liverock when transported short distances is going to have very little die off. Completely uncured liverock is going to have quite a bit of die off and produce a lot of waste.
A large skimmer and lots of water changes, monitoring your ammonia/nitrites/nitrate levels just like in cycling a tank with fish, and doing water changes to keep it below a certain level, I'm sure would save some of the organisms, but you'll never be able to save all of them.
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