Last minute curing questions

[Jasontkd]

Ok all, I am starting to cure my LR (from uncured) on Friday, and i want to make sure I get this right. I am putting the LR in a 100 gallon Rubbermaid to cure with good water flow and my in sump protein skimmer. I should syphon off any excessive junk and do small water changes to keep the good hitch-hikers alive through the spikes. and once everything is zero (or at least everything and nitrates are low) It is cured. Two questions though. HOw do I do my light cycle? i am only going to use a dual strip shop light during curing. Also, I have heard that if you throw a couple of table shrimp in there with the rock, it will speed up the curing, and give you good coraline algae growth. Is this true?

[tdwyatt]

Originally Posted by Jasontkd

Ok all, I am starting to cure my LR (from uncured) on Friday, and i want to make sure I get this right. I am putting the LR in a 100 gallon Rubbermaid to cure with good water flow and my in sump protein skimmer. I should syphon off any excessive junk and do small water changes to keep the good hitch-hikers alive through the spikes. and once everything is zero (or at least everything and nitrates are low) It is cured. Two questions though. HOw do I do my light cycle? i am only going to use a dual strip shop light during curing. Also, I have heard that if you throw a couple of table shrimp in there with the rock, it will speed up the curing, and give you good coraline algae growth. Is this true?

Adding the shrimp is unnecessary, as the material that dies on the rock due to shipping stresses will add enough protein to the curing soup for the ammonia to develop, so don't bother with adding anything extra (and it REALLY starts to stink with a piece of shrimp in there... ) Siphoning off and rinsing extra gunk from the rock will help keep the ammonia from going sky-high, although some have suggested that this may slow the curing process somewhat (I won't say either way, I support a little different POV where I think it is better to have a lower ammonia level and a longer curing time.)


You'll get 50 different opinions on the lighting regimen, Some will say that the use of shop lights is OK, some will say total darkness, some will say that it should be what you're going to use in the tank for 12 hours a day, some will say tank lights at a reduced photoperiod. The type of lights you use to cure with will determine what type of coralline will speciate in your tank, so it would be best to use the same lighting for curing that you intend to use for the tank in which the rock will be displayed. My personal opinion is to use at least VHO lighting or a MH for at least your best rock destined for the top of the aquascaping (if not all the rock in a shallow kiddie pool). Scale it up over a few days starting with a few hours, increasing the duration of the photoperiod until you get to about 8 to 10 hrs of MH or 12 hrs of VHO every 24 hr period. If you start to see any algal blooms, cut back a bit and siphon out any algal or cyanobacterial biomass that appears. Using shop light will be better than nothing, but it may not give you the results that your looking for, so be prepared for a change in what types of coralline grow out when you make the final placement in the display tank.


Watch your ammonia levels, if it starts to get out of hand (about every 3 days normally, but occasionally the rock ships VERY well and doesn't have a lot of die-off), then do a large water change. Some will contradict this and say that the ammonia should be allowed to feed the bacteria, but the rock will cure just as quickly in terms of its bacteria pops with the water change, and the critters on the rock that are sensitive to ammonia will not be much more likely to survive (especially turnicates and misc. corals on the rock.)


I have cured rock both with and without calcium and alk supplementation, and although the coralline does kick in more quickly, I cannot see much other difference in my notes regarding higher apparent survival of misc critters that could be attributed to the supplementation. Rather than do any fancy setup for the Ca and alk, I usually either use two-part additives or just top off with Kalkwasser and a float switch. I like using the kalk, as it will keep the pH up while the organic acids are being formed during the decomposition of the shipping die-off.


Although my best and most diverse survival of hitchhikers on live rock followed my curing of about 450 lbs of rock with this method, I have only cured 7 batches of rock in total, so I can't say that this method is the total reason. It could have been that this rock shipped better, or that it was the time of year, or just the luck of the draw, or other shipments could have had adverse shipping conditions, etc., but it makes sense that this would be the way to get more of the things we want that DO SURVIVE the shipping to survive to populate our tanks. Heck, just getting the high-light species of coralline to survive would be reason enough to do this method of curing. Check with some of our contributing LFS owners on how they receive and cure rock, I would think their experience base would be the broadest (JennM for example).


I hope this works for you, get lots of opinions, weigh the advantages and disadvantages, then make an educated decision on your direction to follow.


HTH

[Jasontkd]

Now, I am using VHO on my tank, and once I put the LR in the actual aquarium, won't the coraline algae change to the light that is in the tank? Also, is there an easy calcium supplement I should be using on my aquarium and LR curing? Or will water changes take care of the calcium?

[Jasontkd]

Please help. now i am all confused

[tdwyatt]

A lot will depend on how strong the final lighting is and how long the rock goes through curing. Geoff changed both lighting and circulation about a year ago and had his system completely change the types of coralline growing in the system, with most of the coralline coverage just disappearing, and the higher lighting spp. being very slow to appear. If you're curing with the intent of promoting crustose coralline algal growth, then it would be best to encourage the type of coralline that will be the final coverage for your rock.

Regardless of how intense your lighting is, there will be niches of various lower light corallines that will find homes. The issue is seldom too much light, rather too little for the high light species to survive, resulting in large amounts of dieoff of the coralline if the no-light period is long enough. There are many species of coralline that have piles, piers, whorls, and miscellaneous other structure that we just don't see often in aquaria with rock that has been cured in the dark or in insufficient light. In the following pix I have included several high-light species along with some transitional pix and a few pix of low-light coralline algae. These are Indo-Pacific sourced rocks (Fiji and Marshall Islands and Jakarta) and have been cured in both direct sunlight and MH lighting. The pix are under MH 10kK 250 watt XM's with no other lighting or e-enhancement. The colors vary from some blue-black to gray to olive to army green, whereas the low light species (seen in either transitions from light to dark in overhangs) are either shades of purple or maroon to brick red. This is not to say that these colors are exclusive to these conditions, but for the most part in the Ocean I see the same thing.


I hope this clarifies the POV a bit. Occasioinal calcium and alk supplementation (like kalkwasser) during rock curing along with adequate circulation and lighting will improve your chances of having a varied and diverse population of coralline algae. The KEY is to make sure that there is enough light to keep the coralline that you want to keep, yet not cause a huge nuisance algal bloom in the process, thus the need for control of ammonia and phosphate from decaying organic materials


HTH

[Jasontkd]

I am only going to have dual 72" VHO on my tank, so I am really not too concerned with low light coraline. As long as it flters, I am fine with it. It isn't going to be a drastic change between lights