Gonna cook my rocks, what about corals?

[JimL77]

After fighting and giving up on hair algae, I have decided to try cooking my rocks. The tank and rocks nearly 20 years old. My question is: what do I do about my corals and zoos? Will any of them survive two months in the dark? I will frag all the hard corals and some of the zoos, but it would be hard to get them all off the rock.

[Qballv1]

They wont survive that long without light. Hammer, chisel, gloves and safety goggles and you should get most of them off.

Have you looked at all avenues? Perhaps your rocks are leaching phosphates? 20 years old is pretty darn old for LR.

[JimL77]

Rocks are for sure pretty old and leaching lots of stuff. I am hoping the cooking will eliminate all of that stuff. I like the rock I have and the way it fits my tank. it would be nice to re use it.

[Sinocard]

DON'T cook the zoas!!!

A few stories of folks boiling them, then almost dying.

You've been warned!!

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1083843

[Panta rhei]

Cooking rocks means sun dry, bleach bath to kill all organics, rinse, sun dry, vinegar or acetic acid or muriatic acid bath to remove a little external layer, rinse and sun dry.
To act safely, bleach and acid bath should be performed outside, and a proper and long rinse should be performed between the two.

You should never put any live rocks in boiling water, the fumes could be very harmful.

[PhaneSoul]

why not cook them IN the aquarium? just take out your sand and keep detritus siphoned out each week. pull algae when need be and depending on your bioload and just how bad it is your lookin at 3-8 months. I did this with my 10g and about 10 pounds of liverock, in about 5 months rocks were clean and coralline covered. no loss of stock (some softies may need to be relocated) and the only big hassle would be removing the sand. when rocks are nice and coralline covered add sand back in, or don't.

[PhaneSoul]

Cooking rocks means sun dry, bleach bath to kill all organics, rinse, sun dry, vinegar or acetic acid or muriatic acid bath to remove a little external layer, rinse and sun dry.
To act safely, bleach and acid bath should be performed outside, and a proper and long rinse should be performed between the two.

You should never put any live rocks in boiling water, the fumes could be very harmful.

you are incorrect.

cooking rocks is a process where light is non existent and you use the bacteria as the main means of taking up nutrients. 100% water changes every week, dunking, swishing and scrubbing rocks each week to clean them of any detritus. the process is done when detritus cuts down considerably one week, there will be a very big difference in detritus from one week to the next.

I have no clue what method you described, but a bleach bath is just a weaker muriatic acid bath, bleach is not needed if muriatic acid is used as the acid will just dissolve what the bleach goes after anyways.

Always heed the DO NOT ACTUALLY LITERALLY BOIL LIVE ROCK warnings, or bake them, or neglect rocks in stagnant water then throw a powerhead in there. all these things can cause palytoxin to vaporize and you can breathe it in and make you very sick and/or die.

[moondoggy4]

I think it would be better to change the phrase, do not use the term Cook.

Light Deprived

[Tang Salad]

I think it would be better to change the phrase, do not use the term Cook.

Light Deprived

So, so true. Quite a few years ago, when this term first surfaced, I kinda flipped out saying 'cook' was probably the dumbest possible word to describe the process. I suppose 'lick' would have been even dumber, but that's beside the point. Unfortunately, 'cook' seems to have stuck.

[JimL77]

No actual boiling or raising temp in the plan. Just gonna put rocks in light tight containers with flow and heat for a while.