Live Rock Curing

[Brent Hutchings]

I just put 150 lbs of live rock in my new tank, half is cured and half I got right out of the box. (non cured figi, about 70 lbs). My tank is about 170 gal (60X24X27). I am putting about 1000 gph throuth the sump with a 200 micron prefilter, and about 400 ghp through a large DIY dd style skimmer. Additional flow is provided by 2 Vortec powerheads (3000 gph each)

The rock did not stink when it came in and had not showed any signs of die off in the last 48 hours.

I have 650w of 10,000K MH lighting over the tank.

My questions are:
How long do I cure the rock and during the curing process how much light should I put on the tank, if any.
BTW I have 2X250 and 1X150 with no suplemental lighting.

[Finding Emo]

I'm not too sure how much lighting to suggest but the corraline algae will not grow without light. And as far as how long the tank will take to cure you just need to keep an eye on it and do alot of testing to see when your tank get through the nitrogen cycle, hence the term "cycling" my tank took only a week but my rock came straight from a friends tank and i have heard of other's who took over a month. so my suggestion is just to keep an eye on it. and to get the coralline algae to grow make sure you have good calcium levels in the tank as well

[o.c.d.]

I don't like to cure LR with lights on,unless your trying to keep something alive thats growing on it. Keep the skimmer on high and water changes ready. Test kit will tell you when it's safe as opposed to someone telling you your LR is safe.

[drfdisk]

Pacific East Aquaculture has a nice article on curing LR.

[Brent Hutchings]

Found it, great artical.
http://www.drmaccorals.com/CuringRock.aspx