Cooking live rock with Muriatic Acid (1 Viewer)

[jhill9]

Last week I did a mixture of Muriatic Acid and RO/DI water. Did 2 round of cook and spray off with hose. Then let dry and been soaking in RO/DI water for the past week. Just checked the phosphate of the water and it is 0.20ppm. Is that good enough or should I cook it again?

 

[Diesel]

You got it all wrong....................
I'm not coming for dinner if you cook rock!

Btw, 0.20 that's good.
Now let it soak in some curry I mean saltwater with a pump to cure and somewhat cycle it for a few days, a week is better.

 

[BlackSS]

.2 is good? I think more like .02-.05 max is good right? What did you test with? Most phosphate test kits are pretty poor, mine always show zero, but that isn't really possible (corals would all die). Really need to test with calorimeter to get a decent idea.

i just did the same thing with a 10# piece of dry rock that looked a little crusty. I put it in a salt bucket with a little piece of live rock from my tank and after about 5 days I can't detect anything nitrite/plos/trate/ammonia.... Ready to go in the tank.

i think your rocks are leaching phosphate into the water

 

[jhill9]

I use a Hanna checker. Maybe I will cook them again just to be safe.

 

[BlackSS]

Hanna checker should be much better than standard test kit. Have you checked the tap water you rinsed with? Or your rodi to test the accuracy of the Hanna? Rodi should have no phosphates

 

[jhill9]

Yeah, RO/di is 0. The rock was pretty nasty so not sure what it would have been before I started.

 

[d00dy]

"Cooking" and "Acid Baths" are two separate things that produce similar results. I gave some dry rocks an acid bath early December, and have been letting them cook (kept in a dark normal saltwater conditions to let bacteria eat the organics in the rock) for a couple of weeks now. The reason I am "cooking" the rock is I plan to change my entire rockscape out slowly in my running setup. The "cooking" of the rock is optional after an acid bath, but I would think it's best to do it for few weeks to be on the safe side.