What's up with cooking LR?????

[tabwyo]

I am sorry, but I thought the whole idea behind live rock was the "LIFE". I know, I know, somebody will correct me and say the "L" in "LR" pertains to the bacteria. Well my gym shoes have bacteria and I don't consider them live. In fact they smell quite dead, lol. seriously though, it perplexes me that somebody who had paid top dollar for LR would decide to go and kill it. I know the bacteria survives but all the extras is what make it alive, IMO. Healthy LR is lovely with all of it coralline, tuni's, sponges, dusters and even aipts and alge. It seems as if this hobby is falling prey to nature repeating itself. I remember sterile tanks of bleached sand and rock. alot of the "cooked rock" I see isn't far off from those lifeless skeletons of early SW history. 75% of my viewing pleasure is occupied by all of the "incedental life" in my tank. Yes I have hair alge, well a couple patches. I consider them pasture land for my LMB and honestly they are a very striking color of blue green. Sorry for the long rant. I guess I just read one too many LR cooking threads and snapped. If you want dead rock then start with dead rock. Don't buy real LR then decide you can't handle the life that comes with it. IMO, the only thing that consitutes a pest is anything out of balance. In my tanks 99% of the time I am the one out of balance. Any other views?????

[tabwyo]

sorry folks I am spelling challenged but I think you get it anywho

[leveldrummer]

makes a good point. i prefer the hair algae not taking over my tank. but cooking rock just seems a bit extreme, but to each their own, and there are many ways to get the same outcome in this hobby.

[Fly Guy]

Ill just offer this. Once you cook your rock once, you will never NOT cook your rock when starting a tank up. The life that does die will come back and your system will be far healthier than you ever imagined before doing it for the first time.
Im on my third batch of cooking but the last batch i got in 250 lbs of premium as fresh uncured and i cooked it for 12 weeks. It was sweet rock....it had four different colors of coralline on it and yes, i more or less killed it all. But that tank is now 7 weeks old and not only do i have to scrape coralline off the walls every day, all of hte colors that were originally there are already coming back as well as the tank already looks like its 6 months old. Zero nuisance algae and the tank can support anything i throw at it at 7 weeks old.
Its the best thing ive ever done for my reefs. Thats whats up with it IMO. : )

[garvondavis14]

the bacteria is alive, correct? hmm...
some people buy live rock for the "incidental" life, just as you stated
the main benefit though, is the bacteria that comes with it that provides filtration for your aquarium...w/out that, how much "incidental" life would be on the rock?

don't get me wrong, i love all the little things too, and i didn't cook my rock. but i completely understand why many people do. sacrifice some of the good to get rid of most of the bad...not too bad of a tradeoff, eh?

cooked rock is a LONG way off from the "lifeless skeletons" of early SW tanks...that bleached sand and rock had no biological filtration on it, as our live rock does today.

one last comment " If you want dead rock then start with dead rock. Don't buy real LR then decide you can't handle the life that comes with it."
cooking your rock doesn't mean you want dead rock...at all. that's a pretty bogus statement. many things are still alive on rock after cooking, not even counting the bact. sponges are a given....ppl have even come out of LR cooking with coral still alive, such as GSP. soo.....cooked rock is not neccessarily dead rock....and people don't do it just because they decide they can't handle the life that comes with it.

good night

[garvondavis14]

fly guy...ur baby have a friend in there? (avatar)

[pledosophy]

Dead rock and cooked rock are far different. Cooked rock retains the aerobic and anaerobic bacteria's that are present in good rock. Aerobic bacteria big deal IMO, it is easily restablished. Anaerobic bacteria is an extremely slow grower and IME looking at slides from a home scientist type guy the anaerobic bacteria has an extremely difficult time colonizing dead rock. A tank without anaerobic bacteria is no fun at all.

I keep LR for the filtration benefits. Not much of a fan of hitchikers, and nuissance alages like coraline. That's right I said it, coraline is a PITA, you know you hate scraping it off too.

If you ever plan on keeping corals you can't eliminate all of the hitchikers out there, but I like to start clean. My tanks run perfect and stable. I think part of it is the amount and quaility of the rock I use.

JMO

[canit0]

IMO there is no correct way of establishing a tank by today's standards. We have alot more shared knowledge to begin with than ever before. Personally, I do not "cook live rock" for the fact that I love the sponge, colors, algae, beneficial bacteria, and the good hitch hikers I've encountered. Again, IMO cooking rock is a little extreme. But whats next, boiling fresh clean sea water? (jk)

In addition, my parameters have always been near to perfect. Ofcourse, I also keep up with maintenance ALOT!

[tims]

tab,
there maybe a difference in the meaning of terms too. When i buy LR, yes i look at he size, the color, and where it came from. But i also have to look at the amount of time it has been in the LFS Too, Are you considering "cooking" to be curing of the LR? the transporation of the LR out side of a tank can and usally will cause some die off. not to mention there can be some bad ( sorta) hitch hikers..

[whatevva]

Tab, I'm with you 100%!

IMO, Bacteria does not live rock make. I want what the reef gives me and I don't need to alter the materials to make it enjoyable. I have a bit of HA, and I have a few types of Macro. To me, that's what makes the whole thing look real.

[whatevva]

Oh, and to the people that say "Buy dead rock and you can make it live"? Sorry....Can't be done

[Sara7814]

Originally Posted by whatevva

Oh, and to the people that say "Buy dead rock and you can make it live"? Sorry....Can't be done

ok so i was reading this whole post. then it got me thinking that i have read other stuff that says to buy this other sand and do something or whatever and it will become LS.. now im a noobie and just asking questions so are you saying that this cant be done either because it wont be live?

[icebear]

this thread needs to define 3 things:

"cooking" rock

"curing" rock

and
sterilizing rock

and a little bit about bacterial seeding


i'd like to see all those defined and explained side-by-side, cause i'm not all that good at figuring it out myself. Yanno, pros and cons in comparison.



oh, and i have an old salt tank book from the 1960's that says take everything out of the tank every 4 months and boil/bleach the pancakes out of it, and if you don't you are a bad person, and dirty and lazy....

[VWD]

I also think that cooking rock is a smart thing to do, I don't buy rock or put it in my tanks in hopes of getting critter, hitchikers with it, I only want what i put in the tank, when it comes to stocking it. I buy my rock for all the bacteria's that come with it, Mother Nature, cooking the rock don't hurt it, just all the other unwanted stuff,gives you better rock in the process.
Everyone hads seen the stuff thet fall of the rock during the curing of it and during the cycle, I say cook the rock and do it for a good amount of time until it's done.

[Geoff]

it all depends on what you plan on doing with your tank. for those that want a DSB having uncured LR is the way to go for you. that way you have the most number of critters in the LR that will populate your DSB and keep it working for as long as possible before it ALL needs to be replaced due to phosphate buildup.

"cooking" LR is the process for removing phopshates from the rock itself.

"curing" LR is the process for removing all critters that are incapable of living in our systems.

"sterilizing" LR is the process for removing all live from the rock.

i actually prefer the sterilized LR for when i am setting up a tank. it still takes a couple of months to get the tank cycled. it takes very little real LR to seed the sterilized LR. it does not take long for you to get the odd critters anyway just from the few corals and snails you will buy to clean the tank.

even with very limited amount of LR i have used. i have already acquired good populations of tunicaes, sponges, bristleworms, and feather dusters.

G~