cooking liverock

[messy1messmer]

what is this? this was mentioned in switching to BB.

[cubuffs]

Steve,

Cooking live rock is essentially placing your rock in a dark container for 6-8 weeks, allowing all of the stuff growing on the rock to die off. you do 100% water changes on a weekly basis. By the end of the time, you should be left with very little growth, and some completely white and bare live rock. There is a HUGE thread on RC so please do a search to get the specifics.

[slojmn]

I cooked my rocks prior to setting up my tank. I kept the rocks in a dark container for 10 weeks with just water and a powerhead to keep the water moving. Every three days I swished each rock individually in 4 containers of fresh salt water, sort of like an assembly line and then replaced them in the holding container with 100% new water. It was a lot of committment to the process but tons of detrius came off week after week. There is a great thread, as cubuffs noted, on RC that has specific directions for the process.

[Serioussnaps]

I suggested it and I wish i did it when I moved my tank. I am in the process of brainstorming my larger tank and the first thing I know I will do is order new live rock and cook it for about 3-4 months.

Its probably a little later for you to do this now steve.

Did you decide to pull the BB trigger?

[mboley1]

What is the purpose??? Unless you are unnecessarily concerned about a little Nitrates that will be nutralized anyway.

[trueblackpercula]

cooking rock ?????????????? well I thought about it before I went BB but never found the need to destroy all the life we pay for thats on the live rock. If thats the case just by what they call base rock or artificial rocks for a lot less:)
Michael

[fishdoc11]

It's not true that cooking rock leaves it devoid of life. Most of the life survives quite nicely.

Chris

[trueblackpercula]

wow did not know that....................so then whats the porpose? just to kill off the algea? I never really did get into it only becuase it just did not make sense to me even after reading the whole thread on it:)
Michael

[reefsahoy]

does this not make the die off cause phosphate leaching? how would you then accelerate the process of getting rid of phosphate leaching from the rocks

[fishdoc11]

Bacterial turgor pressure pushes the detritus out of the rock. By putting the rock in the dark and giving the rock less nutrients to process you switch the major activity from outside the rock to inside the rock. At least that's the way I understand it from how it was presented when there was lots of discussion concerning it on these boards a while back. The main dieoff is corraline which comes back fairly quickly as most people know.

Chris

[Gary Majchrzak]

here's a link to SeanT's thread regarding how to "cook" liverock:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=485572&highlight=cooking

more so than Bryopsis and/or Derbesia, an explosion of Cladophora (seen below) can indicate "old tank syndrome" or conditions of low alkalinity and/or poor PO4 export.
The rocks in this photo are prime candidates for "cooking".
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y270/gary334/Cladophora.jpg