Maintaining Live Rock

[rbredding]

THIS POST of Jenn's Post in the HA thread, prompted another line of questioning:

JennM;403350 wrote: You have phosphate and nitrate - it's being bound up by the algae.

Do a water change. Use the bucket of waste water as a sink. Take a new/unused toothbrush, pull out each rock and scrub the stuff off. That stuff usually comes off pretty easily (as opposed to Bryopsis that just does NOT want to come off).

Give the rock a good swirly in the waste water after you scrub it to knock off the algae and any other detritus that's in/on the rock that is also feeding the algae.

You may need to repeat this process 2 or 3 times before you get the upper hand on it.

Do NOT scrub the rock within the tank because the stuff will just float around and settle someplace else and the problem perpetuates.

Also, check your calcium/magnesium levels. If they are low, the calcareous stuff can't compete to take up other nutrients. Check alkalinity too and make sure that's in order.

Jenn

will cleaning live rock in this manner not remove the "good bacteria" as well as any coraline algae as well?

Should live rock be "maintained" at all in an established tank, or should this only be done to remove a nuisance algae?

I've got more questions, I'll give people time to answer those though..

 

[jennm]

Why would it kill good bacteria? It's being washed in the saltwater that came out of the tank. Coralline is not easily scrubbed off with a brush either.

If the rock is left out of water for more than a short while, some coralline will die off, but it's a small price to pay to manually export the nuisance algae. And I'm not suggesting to leave the rock "out to dry" at all.

IMO there's no harm in moving rock around, and periodically rinsing it in saltwater - "giving it a swirly" to knock off detritus that may have settled on it. In fact, doing so keeps it cleaner and there's less chance of hair algae getting started on it.

In a mature tank with encrusting corals that may not be a practical undertaking - but fanning around the rock either with hands, a baster or a powerhead to blow detritus off the rocks, is a good thing.

Jenn

 

[rbredding]

cool...

I don't know why it would remove good bacteria other than it would remove detritus which probably contains some good bacteria...

I'm getting ready to move my 30 gallon inside (from the garage) and wanted to give all the live rock a good cleaning, beforehand... (I was thinking about siphoning the sand too.. )

would it be advisable to do all of this at once? (I'm planning on removing most of the water temporarily so i can move the tank and then putting it back when I set it back up)