Recovering overheated rock

[Phishnoob]

I posted in the Monday thread late but my stupid Penske rental truck had a broken air conditioner. The trip across the Mojave desert and through Vegas got me to 114 in the cab where I had everything bagged and in coolers. The rock was all up front too in separate containers. This was 18 hours of hell on earth and I was ready to pass out every minute along with my little dog. I kept pouring cold water all over us and kept the throttle pegged.

The rock got hot as well, but there is no way to tell if it suffered the same fate as the fish, inverts and softies. They were a total wipe.

Do I need to do a full cycle on all the rock from scratch now? Did the heat kill everything off? Will it take a cup of sand or live sand mailed in to get things moving again?

Any suggestions on how to recover?

[tdwyatt]

we will talk...


cycle the rock with a skimmer and good water changes (>40% q 3 days the first week or so) until the skimmer stops dumping tons of crap or the nitrates fall below 20 PPM, this will be the best bet to get any survivors to make it through the cycle that will follow. Get some Rubbermaid Brutes on wheels and just put the rock in and connect a skimmer directly to a submersible (Mag 12 or so) on the bottom of the barrel, let the effluent run into the top of the barrel from the skimmer.

Carbon or ammocarb

some short duration reef lighting (like 3 hrs a day)


That seachem filter stuff (forgot the name, it's been a long day) as well

Just start testing nitrates and ammonia every 3 days for a bit, then we can talk about a DSB, although you may need to seed the tank with either fresh LR or some sand from a few choice sites...

[Phishnoob]

Thanks Tom,

Got all of the above but cycling it in a bare tank right now. It was easier to do the lighting and hook up my Aqua C pro to that. There are four powerheads faced up from the bottom too to really oxygenate everything.

I will test all of the ammonia cycle stuff towards the weekend and plot it. I am hoping that there are enough thingies left in the rock to do much of anything though and get a cycle going.

[tdwyatt]

too bad about the rock, but this will make great base rock in the next tank... (always looking for the next tank)

[VWD]

perry sorry to hear about the rock and the rest of the stuff you lost, I am glad you both made it there safe.

[yardboy]

What a bummer Perry. I can identify with you on that trip acrose the Mojave. I've done that route several times, ala Hunter S. Thompson. It's a looooong way.

I have to disagree with Tom about the state of your rock. I pretty much boiled mine in my garage a few weeks ago. I've since reset it up inside the house and have been surprised at the life that is slowly creeping back out. I lost very few zoanthids, though they've been slow to open back up. I was even happy to see the star polyps reappear. I only lost a few of the snails, but all the fish and hard corals. Crabs seemed unaffected.
There is a tremendous amount of organic material in your water though. I changed out half of mine immediately and have been doing 15% changes every week. The Euroreef, even at the wettest setting is putting out very black skimmate. Looks almost like burnt motor oil. Ewwwwww....
Mainly though, corraline seemed completely unaffected. I've got some rocks with purple on them (which for me is the slowest growing color) and they are just the same as always!