Saving live rock.
- Thread starter damontoy
- Start date
You should be fine with just an air pump. You will need an ammonia source otherwise the bacteria will eventually die off from lack of food. A tiny bit of pellet food and occasional water changes should do the trick.
You might be an engineer if...You have no life, and you can PROVE it mathematically.
You might be an engineer if...You have no life, and you can PROVE it mathematically.
The heater is not needed. The bacteria can survive in cold water. Just keep the salinity where it needs to. Also I wouldn't let it feed on the nutrients bound in it, I would ramp it up a month before you want to use it and get a full blown cycle going in the tub to increase the bacteria population .
What condition is the rock in now? If it has plenty of organic material attached to it (microfauna, algae, etc), or if you have high phosphates or nitrates in your tank I would most definitely run a heater.
Although it will depend on how "cold" your house gets, running the heater has its advantages. The beneficial bacteria that colonize our tanks prefer temps around 65-85 degrees. Can they survive colder temps? Probably...but I'd rather keep the temp stable and in range to allow them to thrive vs just surviving.
If you really want to avoid using a heater, you're better off running the heater initially to allow the bacterial population to rapidly increase in size as it consumes the organics locked up in the rock. Test the water for nitrates and phosphates regularly during this "curing" process...then remove the heater when you are reading barely detectable levels of nitrates and phosphates and you are about ready to use the rock. Why? Once the organics in the rock are consumed, the natural die off and re-growth of bacteria is what is supporting the colony. By reducing the temperature at that point, you can slow the metabolism of the bacteria down, which reduces the die-off...and, theoretically, could allow the bacteria population to increase just a touch higher than it's previous threshold due to the decreased temperature and metabolism. That being said...I have no way of measuring what benefit you'd see from that method...it's just based on my background knowledge of bacteriology.
FWIW...I currently have 2 buckets of live rock running to cure the rock. 1 bucket has a heater, the other does not...I plan on testing the water in a few months prior to using it just to compare the nutrient levels in each bucket. I'll make a thread when the time comes.
Although it will depend on how "cold" your house gets, running the heater has its advantages. The beneficial bacteria that colonize our tanks prefer temps around 65-85 degrees. Can they survive colder temps? Probably...but I'd rather keep the temp stable and in range to allow them to thrive vs just surviving.
If you really want to avoid using a heater, you're better off running the heater initially to allow the bacterial population to rapidly increase in size as it consumes the organics locked up in the rock. Test the water for nitrates and phosphates regularly during this "curing" process...then remove the heater when you are reading barely detectable levels of nitrates and phosphates and you are about ready to use the rock. Why? Once the organics in the rock are consumed, the natural die off and re-growth of bacteria is what is supporting the colony. By reducing the temperature at that point, you can slow the metabolism of the bacteria down, which reduces the die-off...and, theoretically, could allow the bacteria population to increase just a touch higher than it's previous threshold due to the decreased temperature and metabolism. That being said...I have no way of measuring what benefit you'd see from that method...it's just based on my background knowledge of bacteriology.
FWIW...I currently have 2 buckets of live rock running to cure the rock. 1 bucket has a heater, the other does not...I plan on testing the water in a few months prior to using it just to compare the nutrient levels in each bucket. I'll make a thread when the time comes.