Live Rock Cure Question...

[sobeones]

i was wondering if there is way to speed up the process of curing live rock.i was thinking about trying nutrafin cycle to speed it up, but i wanted some opinions first. thanks.

[ST3PH3N]

Hey man I found this..sounds pretty legit
"You do need to use dechlorinator in your water, or the chlorine will kill the beneficial organisms in your live rock. But using ammonia and nitrate removers will not speed up the curing of your live rock.
Curing live rock is different from the "cycling" process of establishing biolfiltration. Live rock, if it's any good, already has a colony of beneficial bacteria, so you don't need a "cycle" to develop this. The problem is that live rock also generally contains a variety of other organisms that will not survive in your aquarium (live rock is cultured in most cases by putting rocks in the ocean and collecting them some months or even years later). "Curing" is basically waiting for this other stuff to die off, so it won't rot and poison your tank and kill all your desirable animals. So your curing process needs to include a lot of water changes to get rid of all these decomposition products. You will also need good light on the curing tank, so that photosynthetic organisms, such as coraline algae, will not die in the meantime.
How long the process takes depends on the individual lot of live rock you have. Some has a lot of stuff dying and rotting; some only a little. So you can't say, "I'll only cure it for two weeks, and no more," you have to wait until it is no longer producing measurable levels of ammonia in the tank water. I hope I have made clear that the ammonia itself isn't the primary problem here; it's all the rotting stuff that produces the ammonia."

[sobeones]

alrighty koo man thanks. guess i'll just wait it out.

[CoryDude]

I used prodibio bio-digest on my last startup to reduce the cycle by a few weeks. But your better off just going the tried and true route. Even with the prodibio products, my tank took a few months before I could keep the fish and corals health

Curing and cycling usually go hand in hand. You will have some die off, which causes ammonia spikes, which establishes your nitrogen cycle. If you transferred the rock from an established system, then it may only be a curing process. Either way your going to cause the nitrifying bacteria to kick into overdrive from the extra nitrogen compounds that are being released from the die off.

The part I disagree with on the above quote is about using a good lighting system. Unless you want a nice algae bloom, keep the tank fairly dark during the startup process. Re-establishing coralline algae is very easy once your cycling/curing process is complete.

[sobeones]

ok i will probably just keep up with the waiting game. its hard not to get excited haha i hate looking into my empty tank with only sand and a damsel, but it'll all be worth it in the end.

[ST3PH3N]

:thumbsup: