[Milo]

I have a 75 Gallon salt water tank. I was emulating a california temp at 65 before my chiller decided to go on murder mode and turn up to 85... don't ask I have no idea why it did that. ( it would make a horrible noise every so often that sounded like a tire rubbing on a car.

Anyway the bottom line is most everything was cooked over the course of a night and sadly I have a giant tank of corpses and rock. I want to clean all the plant life from the rocks and store them tell i can start fresh with a new cycle of water.

I see what looks like small orange tube worms crawling on my rock and that concerns me. I know nothing about cleaning rock since the tank was setup by a friend ( now moved away )

What steps do I take to clean the rock and store it tell im ready to cycle. I live in an apartment so elaborate bucket filling is what I would like to avoid. Can I just boil the rock in a big pot and scrub it down under the tap?? Will the rock become brittle and crack if I put it in dry storage. I have alot of questions but I hope there is a reply that will hit all the key points.cared :

[hosser]

you dont want to kill everything off the live rock as in boiling it. If you want to reuse it as live rock you can get some rubbermaid tubs and an airstone fill it with salt water and just let them sit with the lid on it. That will kill any plant life but keep the beneficial things alive. Air stone very important. Also do water changes on that water after a week or two as stuff dies off it will get pretty nasty.
If your gonna redo the tank soon then just pull the rock, and put it in a tub and swoosh it around knocking most of the debris junk off (carcasses and igger dead chunks) then set it back in the tank and precycle it. Nothing wrong with using what is on the rock to help the cycle along.
Good Luck

[spanko]

Since it is summer you could put it out on your balcony if you have one and just let it dry out in the sun for a week or so. Then some good scrubbing and concerted rinsing and it probably then could be stored in boxes for as long as you want.

[map95003]

I tore down my 55g 4 years ago when I moved out of state and got hitched. I have about ~60 lbs of fiji rock that was just taken out of the tank and kept in buckets (all dried up). I didn't think it would take this long to rebuild the system (other priorities) but I'm in the process of building a 75 g reef tank and using my old 55g to build the sump. The advise I got from quite a few members here on RB is to just cycle the old dried up rock with the new rock I'm buying (an additional ~50 - 60 lbs). I never cleaned out my rock but now that it's dried it's all white. I took it out of my shed last wknd, left it on the deck and it rained, now I could see specs of purple algae growing (possibly coraline?). If you're planning on setting up the tank in the near future, I wouldn't dry out the rock...everything on it will die, then it's no longer live rock. Keep it in some sort of rubbermaid tub with a few powerheads, a heater and possibly your skimmer...if it will be a while before you setup the tank and you have to dry it out I think you could just put it out in the sun, just keep in mind it will just be like base rock when you do decide to use it again, but if you add some new live rock/live sand, over time the old rock should be live again.

[ksreefbuilder]

Sorry about your loss. How soon do you plan on setting up a new tank? You would want to keep the rock as alive as you can if you will be doing it soon? If not you may just want to sell the rock locally and buy new when you start over. To clean the rock I would just take it out piece by piece and scrub it with a new tooth brush. You could boil it if you are sure everything is dead, but that would be a long process depending on how much rock you have. The rock is composed of calcium, and is about like a bone so storage should not affect it. The worms are more than likely bristle worms, but would have to see a pic to make a positive id. Go to Google and search the pics section and look and see if that is what you have. If you have a ton of them you just might consider having a fish that eats them next time to avoid over population.

[Milo]

ooo very nice to see how fast people help in this forum.

From what I am hearing I think my best course of action would be to pull each chunk of rock out and scrub it down and store it in a bucket with circulation pump, while I scrub each chunk of rock.

After I do all that should I just let the tank circulate and balance out. ( Side note )

[dori9941]

sorry for all that lose. What an awful thing to wake up to. I hope all get sorted out

[pogodzib]

Originally Posted by Milo

ooo very nice to see how fast people help in this forum.

From what I am hearing I think my best course of action would be to pull each chunk of rock out and scrub it down and store it in a bucket with circulation pump, while I scrub each chunk of rock.

After I do all that should I just let the tank circulate and balance out. ( Side note )

That's what I'd do. Clean the dead corals off the rock and then place it in a covered (to stay dark) bucket/container of new saltwater with some circulation. Depending on how long the rock will be in the container, you may want to consider doing water changes every week for a few weeks to help clean the rock quicker. This process is often used by people with algae issues and it is called "Cooking Live Rock". The critters that are still alive in your LR, of which there should still be a lot of them, will clean the rock both inside and out during this process. Taking the LR and letting it dry out will cause everything that is in the rock to die, thus causing you to have a bunch of LR that is full of dead stuff that you can't get out of it.

[prototypep2p]

What I would do put it all in a tub with high salinity salt water however high your haydrometer or whatever you use will go get a water pump for water flow. get you a nice clean scrub brush scrub all of your rock in that water let sit and do a water change the next day continue process and you will have it recured in 3-4 days.