rock cooking 101

[clone]

i need to know if you cook your rock.
(putting the rock in a plastic toat/with cover and powerheads and letting it sit for a couple months.)
will it kill off red slime and maybe some bryopis?
Also when i need to put it back into my new tank will it take longer to cycle?
does cooking it mean that im killing the rock?
i know ill still have to do water changes but does the tempature matter?
its going to be sitting in my garage and im sure it gets pertty hot in there.

[LoneStar]

Ok first off, if you got the time, cooking live rock is well worth it. At the end, you'll have some very nice, biologicaly active rock that will work well in your system.

Cooking the live rock will require time, usually upwards of 2 months (or more if you got patience). You will want to get some trash cans with lids, a power head(s), and a heater (depending on the temp outside). What you need to do is fill the trash cans with saltwater and the live rock. Throw in a powerhead for circulation and the heater to maintain temp.

During the first month, once a week, you will need to get some smaller 5g buckets. 3 of them will work. Fill each of the 5g buckets with fresh saltwater. You will use these buckets to 'swish and clean' your live rock. Start with one bucket, dunk, swish, and scrub the rock. Use the remaining 5g buckets to rinse. As you perform this action, you will see the water turn dark brown/black as all the detritus falls off. Once your done with the 'swish and clean', replace the water in the trash can with fresh saltwater. Fill the trash can back up and close the lid. Repeat the next weekend. Do this EVERY weekend for the first month. As the weekends pass, the water in the 5g will eventually get clearer with each session.

The second month, you can switch to every other weekend for the 'swish and clean'. By the end of the second month, you will see a significant difference on the rock. Most of the detritus will be removed, and you'll get nice, clean rock. You can go longer than 2 months, as I did it for about 6 (only cause I was still building/aquiring equipment in that time frame).

Some things to consider:

Cooking the live rock WILL NOT kill off the beneficial bacteria, as long as you keep a healthy envionment for them to live in. The cooking process will eventually kill off any algea present on the rock, as you are removing any sources of food and light for it to grow. As the algea die off, and the detritus removes from the rock, this will allow the rock to become more poruss for more benefical bacteria growth.

You can start this process with existing live rock from your system, or from a fresh batch from a store/importer. If you are doing your existing rock, do it ALL at the same time. If you have problems with your system currently, only doing a partial amount will waste your time, as the live rock remaining in your system can just 'infect' your freshly added cooked rock (that is if you are having major algea problems).

Once the cooking process is done, there should be little to no cycle once introduced to your existing tank. Since the rock will be full of beneficial bacteria (and removed of any major organics and detritus), the cycle will be nill.

I did this process over a summer in SA in a garage. I wasn't worried about the water getting too hot in the garage, as bacteria is pretty hardy. Just keep up with the weekly cleaning and water changes.

Some equipment I would recommned would be:

* The Brute trash cans with the dolly wheels. Makes it very nice to move the rock out to the driveway to do the cleaning.
* A few old 5g buckets
* Cheap salt. You don't need any expensive salt mix for this process.
* Plenty of RO/DI on hand. I had a seperate trash can full for each cleaning process.
* A scrub brush. This will be used to remove the old dead matter/detritus from the live rock.
* Simple powerhead that will help oxygenate the water.

[LoneStar]

Here is an old thread I did detailing my cleaning process:
http://www.maast.org/forums/showthread.php?t=34461&page=3


And here you can see how the rock looked when done:
(after the cooking process I threw it with a skimmer in a small tub)
http://www.maast.org/forums/showthread.php?t=35356&page=8