Really Old No Longer Live Rock

[cypres]

Hello everyone. I had an aquarium years ago that was FOWLR. I moved and couldnt bring the tank with me but I did keep the LR. It's been in my garage for years. I'm in the planning stage of setting up a new tank. Can I still use this rock? If so, how do I bring it back to life?

Cheers!

[BlackTip]

It is still usable. There are many different ways to make tank-ready. My preferred way is to soak it in salt water with powerhead and a heater for couple of months. Change the water few times during this period. Before using it, do a phosphate test and act accordingly.

[Jeff4777]

^^ yeah let the rock sit in circulating heated water. When your ready to use it the rock, it will eventually become LR again as its porous inner workings allow bacteria to colonize.

[cypres]

Do I need to get a cycle started?

[Fish Keeper82]

Likely the rock will have some die off on it to provide ammonia to start the cycle process but you will need to add more ammonia of some sort.
I like to add brine shrimp cubes. I get an idea on how much fish i will add and how much food they will consume in a day. Then i simply add that ammount of shrimp to the tank. For me it was just one cube of brine shrimp a day untill cycle was done. This way im sure my bio load will be handled if i feed the same 1 cube a day. I dont like to worry about a mini cycle one fish are added.
Some like to add a deli shrimp for this but, i like the idea of putting in the tank what its going to eventually process anyway. Plus brine shrimp decomposes quicker.

[cypres]

Thanks for your help everyone.

[jayball]

Seeing as how it was used in a FOWLER years ago I will just ask if it was exposed to copper, if so you will need to bath the rock in dilute muratic acid to skin the outside of it off. If it was exposed to high phosphate levels for long periods of time in it's former life you may want to anyway.