How to cure dry rock?

FishieBusiness

Well-Known Member
BRS Member
I have 55lbs. of dry rock (not dry live rock) that I'm going to use in a new build. I have been looking online but everyone is talking curing live dry rock. I'm hoping to accelerate the growth of the biome before adding the rock to the tank. What would you advise? What method would you use?
 
I thought that I was overthinking it. New ground I’ve always upgraded from older tanks. I don’t want to cycle in the tank.
 
Add some established tank sand/rock and an ammonia source. I’ve heard a raw shrimp will do. That will get your nitrifying bacteria in order.

Other flora and fauna kinda needs inoculation, time, food, light. Basically just in tank or kinda fake it.
 
To cure my dry rock I started with a bleach cure (can give details on that if interested) to make sure there was nothing unwanted that would grow eventually. I then added several brands of live bacteria including microbacter 7 and Dr Tims. Think there was a third I used as well to get as much diversity as possible amd then dosed ammonia to maintain about 1-2ppm. When that was processed and would go to 0 by next morning after dosing and nitrite came up and went to 0 I knew it was cyclewd. I then just did some maintainace dosing of ammonia to make sure the ammonia didnt die off. I then added pods from algae barn. Left this in my stock tank for a couple months before setting up the display.
 
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