Looking for Advice - Live Rock with Hair Algae

[ChrisL]

So I lost everything in the last storm (no power for 5 days) and I broke down the tank and put all of my live rock in a trash can with salt water. My tank wasn't in the best of shape before the storm and my rock had a ton of algae, so looking for advice on best way to deal with the rock. Should I bleach it?

Thanks in advance for the tips.

 

[Turbosnail]

If you are going to start over from the beginning I would bleach it and cook and cycle it.

 

[mchartier]

I wouldn't bleach it, I would just cook it for awhile. I crashed during the hurricane, I am still cooking my rocks, every week that I do the dunk and swish and into the new water I can see pods on the rocks and also in the rinsing buckets so not everything was dead from the crash. If you bleach any and everything will die. I was without power for a week. Also there are no traces of the bryopsis and valonia that I had.

 

[wish]

I would scrub it or pressure wash it and do a 50% water change every week for two weeks.
make sure you also have a power head in the trash can too. You would want to remove all the
unwanted spikes from the crash. When you add the rocks back to the tank take it slow and test
until everything is stable.

 

[PSU4ME]

A 50/50 mix of hydrogen peroxide and tank water dip for 3-5 minute will kill all the HA.......I do it when rocks get out of hand and it works really well. Most corals also withstand the dip but if i dip the corals, i usually do it no longer than 3 minutes.

This way nothing really dies......some pods fall off but what can you do.

Try it on a rock and give it two days - HA grays and falls off. Also if you throw some crabs in they help alot once it starts dying.