Dried Coral Pieces - 1990's

[darkcirca]

Last week my boss came into the office with 2 boxes of dried coral for me - he's cleaning out and felt the need to give this to me. He used it in his saltwater tank a 'long time ago'.

Now - I have little history on it, other than it was used in a tank. I'll likely take some pictures, but it's all dried coral basically - still can see the little 'pore' spots on some of them. A few pieces are blue colored, another is purplish, and there are some (of what was) barnacles as well. Not sure if the coloring was added to them, or if this is just what it looked like after it was deceased.

They look pretty neat, and would make great pieces for my tank, but since I know little about them, I was wondering if anyone has any advice on this.

The pieces were all wrapped in newspaper from April 1990, so they haven't been touched in years.

He said he purchased before some ban that prevented it from being sold, but I don't know much else on that.

Any thoughts on using this? I'm finally going to be moving my 90 gallon over to the new house (after 5+ months), and will be redoing all my rock work. I've got only mushrooms/gsp/few other soft corals left, as we left the tank in care of family who in turn overfed and put the nitrate through the roof.

I'm looking forward to getting my tank back up though, and basically 'starting fresh'.

[noahm]

My concern would be that it was most likely used in a fish only tank and had been directly treated with copper. Other issues such as bound up phosphates etc can be dealt with, but not sure how you would eliminate the copper threat. Maybe post in the reef chemistry forum.

[paraletho]

I've got a bunch of this stuff from the 70's and 80's. I use it my tanks some times. I bleached mine and then did a 2month soak in RODI changing every week.Never seemed to hurt a thing and looks real good.

[meco65]

Soak in RO/DI for two weeks or so and then test for copper, If no copper IMO I would say use it.

[Stickboy97]

I had some of this stuff in my tanks in the 90's. They were a pain to keep looking so beautiful... the white tends to turn green or brown (Algae) & the colored pieces (red or blue) turn as well... kind of dull the color. They are cool looking though. I had a small snowflake that loved to curl up inside a blue piece I had that had a hollow base.

[darkcirca]

Thanks!

Hopefully in the next week we will be picking up our RO/DI filter to start making water before we move the tank over. I'll start soaking it then and give it some time. I can always add them later - they are definitely neat looking.