Phosphates and rocks with coral attached

[turboaf]

Hello everyone,

I have another question so as some of you know I have been setting up a new 125gal tank and trying to do everything right. I am cooking all the rock, making sure i have plenty of light for the coral, have the sump set up right and so on.

So after lots of reading through the forum with no luck, I would like to know what all of you do and suggest doing for phosphate removal from rock with coral attached?

I understand that cooking is not an option as it will kill the coral, I have a few pieces of live rock that have polyps and mushrooms attached to them. I don't want to hurt the coral or get rid of it but I do want to make sure there is no phosphate build up in it to mess up the rest of the tank.

Any thoughts, comments or recommendation would be greatly appreciated thanks.

[luther1200]

You could chip the coral off of the rock until after you cook it Then re-attach them.

[turboaf]

Thanks for the suggestions it could work for the mushrooms but as for the Zoanthids I don't think i can get them off the rock with out damaging them.

[Elegance Coral]

If it's just a few pieces of LR with coral on them, I wouldn't worry about it. Cook the majority of them and leave the ones with coral as is. In a 125gl tank it should be easy to "cook" the phosphate out of a few rocks while they're in the tank. As long as the tank isn't overstocked, that is. Just step up phosphate removal. The rocks will slowly release phosphate until they are "cooked". All should be fine.

[Reeftanker3295]

Im having the same problem.. Should i put the corals in a tank with no fish or anything that requires feeding so that there are no phosphates with my biocube lid on it so that they have their light?

[turboaf]

EC thanks for the advice I just was not sure if it would make a difference or not. I only have about three fist size rocks with coral on them. As for the cooking I'm doing that in a Rubbermaid container and in a Rubbermaid trash can.

The first batch has been cooking for about 3 weeks and the second batch i just started 2 days ago.

[three90s&125sump]

It is definatly possible to cook the rock in the tank with animals on the rocks, I just did it. I know people say that you can't have light on the rock while you cook it but I did. It came out great and none of the coral died... In fact they multiplied during the cooking process. I'm going to cook just about all the rock I have in my 225 while I stock it with my lights on. If you have sand you need to get rid of the sand, get lots of flow (100X turnover +) and a way over sized skimmer. In fact that's my recipe for long term success not just cooking rock. I have 300X turnover in my 40 and BB and a skimmer that is rated for a 2000 gallon tank. I way over feed it.

[turboaf]

So Jason i had an idea it might not be a good one lol but it made sense to me.
If your are cooking your coral in the tank with light on just no sand bed.
Then what if you put the coral on some type of lift so the rock and coral were not in the sand there by not leching any phosphates back in to the sand.

you should be able to do just what u were talking about above with no worries as i said it makes sense to me but maybe that is because i want it to make sense .

[Reeftanker3295]

Il probably do what three90 explained, my clove polyp stalks are way too thin for me to frag and i dont want all my rock to look brand new, i want some corraline still left over. Three90 how do you run the lights while cooking rocks like that? Do you run them the same except just have lots of flow, a big skimmer and no feeding or sources of phosphates during the process?

[Hop]

Just to clarify, you cannot cook rocks with light... You are trying to eliminate the algea by means of a low nutrient environment when you do it as Jason suggested. But you never kill the algae completely this way and continue to use an algae driven, rather than a bacterial driven denitrafication process in the tank.

Can it work? Sure nothing wrong with giving it a try, but it could take a long, long time. Since you have the fuel and light to maintain the algae, especially if the rocks are really loaded It's not an attack on Jason, just trying to clarify terms so as not to confuse anyone further down the road.

[Reeftanker3295]

Hop i'd really like to cook the rocks right but i cant frag my clove polyps they are just too darn thin, is there a way to frag them without killing any? See my cooking rock poll for pictures if you want to.

[Hop]

feel free to give it a try and see what happens... I wasn't saying that it wouldn't work, I just want to make sure people know that cooking is completely different and has a purpose and process behind it

[Reeftanker3295]

I kind of only have 2 1/2 months to do this though haha if its going to take longer than that then i dont know what to do. If i get a flat piece of concrete or something to fit in a tupperware can i scrape off all the polyps and put them in the tupperware with the concrete for them to attach to and not have any casualties?

[three90s&125sump]

The main reason for removing the sand is due to the amount of flow in the tank. With 100X+ turn over in the system, the sand would blow all over.

I ran a very reduced lighting schedual and only lit the portion of the tank where the corals were. I gathered them into a small section and started out with a 175 MH for 3 hours a day and worked up to a 400 watt MH 6 hours a day. The main thing is doing a very very vigorous sloshing in a 3 bucket progression. You obviously can't slosh a coral very vigorously but you can do it more often to the rocks with corals on them. Do the sloshing and a 60 to 70 percent water change once per week (you will obviously have to acclimate your corals every time). Slosh the corals 2 or 3 times per week.
No matter how you do it the end result is to make PO4 too scarce in the system to allow algae to grow.

The way hop is telling you to do it works better faster. Its the way I did my first couple batches of rocks. The reason the way I'm saying to do it worked so well for me is because I have the system running the way it is now and I can continue to cook the rock. You could do it like hop says for all the rock with out coral on it and do it like I say for the rock with the coral on it.

[Reeftanker3295]

Jason i really want to cook all my rock right but have no idea how to get my clove polyps off! The stalks are really tiny will my plan above work or will they all die from cutting them off?