Friday I'm in Love - and Other Things About the Artist

♫ "I don't care if monday's blue
tuesday's grey and wednesday too

thursday i don't care about you
it's friday I'm in love...."♫

I love The Cure - great band - great song, thanks to my British college roommate. Ironic that I started "curing" my live rock on a Friday? Probably not, but I enjoyed the thought of it anyways.

The first step in getting the tank ready - outside of equipment - is prepping the internal aquascape that will eventuallysupport the inhabitants. This includes both the Live Rock (abbreviated LR on most fish forums) and Live Sand (as you probably already guessed -abbreviated LS).

In order to discuss what it means to cure these things, it is probably important to understand why both rock and sand are preceded with the word "live." The rock and sand host very important micro/macroscopic marine life that is necessary for stabilization and filtration of the ecosystem.

Live rock in an aquarium contains multiple types of bacteria, algae and corals. These help to with rid the water of waste products such as ammonia, nitrate and phosphate. The waste is taken up by algae and photosynthetic corals growing on and in the rock. Bacteria also converts the ammonia into nitrate. The nitrate can then be metabolized by the algae and corals, or it can be denitrified by bacteria in close proximity to the nitrate producing bacteria.

Now if you remember from my first post, I inherited ~ 50 lbs of dead, aka dry, rock. This rock was once "live", but when removed from its aqueous environment years ago, all of the live marine life died. What remains of the dead organisms is fixed to the porous surfaces of the rock. It is my job to resurrect this rock. Consider this rock my Lazarus.

Just like there are 9 ways to skin a cat, there are many approaches to curing live or dead rock. The following is the method I am starting:

• Throw the rock a Rubbermaid with a lid - mine came this way so it was easy.
• Place 2 powerheads and 1 heater in the container.
Fill with saltwater made with a RODI base.
Turn on powerheads, and set heater for 80°F
• Place a piece of cured LR from a LFS (local fish store) in the container to help seed the process.
• Cover and let stew.
• Check water ammonia and nitrite levels regularly.
• Siphon out waste and dead material, also scrape any from the rock - and do a 50% water change about once per week.
Continue until ammonia and nitrite levels are at zero for a few consecutive days.

Mine has been in the mix for 4 days so far - this could take a few/several more weeks, but all good things come to those who wait.

I also may switch up the process a little...

Since I am starting a new tank and getting all of my equipment in, I am beginning the process in the Rubbermaid. When I get the tank ready to run, I will order ~50 lbs more cured LR (which will still need to cure) and ~80 lbs of live sand. I plan to finish all of the curing in the system before I add any inhabitants to the aquarium (note that this only works if your tank contains no other livestock).

The benefit of this amendment to my approach is two-fold:

1. I can make sure that all of the plumbing and equipment for the aquarium are working correctly.
2. The beneficial macro/micro organisms will start to inhabit the sand and the cryptic refugium sooner.

This is a long, slow, but necessary process. So I think I have a few more rounds of: