How to Keep Live Rock Clean?
It is essential to keep live rock clean to prevent bad smell and irritation for your pet fish. Clean stones does not allow the bacteria and algae to grow inside it.
If you are putting some dirty rock in your freshly prepared new aquarium, then this rock will completely spoil your aquarium.
To keep your aquarium clean, you must keep your tank’s live rock clean and clear from dirt, debris, bacteria, detritus, and algae. It is recommended that you follow all the guidelines mentioned here.
Contents
How to Keep Live Rock Clean?
You have to clean up your aquariums rock from the bunch of unwanted bacteria, trash, algae, aiptasia, and Majano growing on it, etc.
The actual cause of odorous and dirty rocks is the high level of nitrates in the fish aquarium. The build-up of organic matter and excessive decomposed food makes the rocks smell bad.
Rocks are at the base of the tank, and even if it looks clean, still there is fish waste inside the decorations and rock pits.
The fish waste produces bad smell in rocks when it accumulates below the stones.
Keeping and maintaining clean rocks and a healthy aquarium is not a difficult task. By just adopting regular maintaining and cleaning tactics, you can keep the stones clean and tidy.
It is quite easy to remove the massive amounts of nitrogenous waste built upon the tank rocks. They are the most accessible part of your tank to clean individually.
But collectively, cleaning so many rocks together or single big rock becomes difficult. Some of the tools can help you in cleaning the entire gravel and small stone even inside your aquarium.
Give Live Rocks bleach bath to keep it clean
To cure your live aquarium rock, give it a bleach bath. You have to follow the detailed procedure for this.
Take out the rocks from your aquarium and put them in a separate container. Make a bleach bath, about 2-3 cups per 5 gallons of tap water.
Bleach is the hydrogen peroxide solution that can clean the highly stiff stain spots and smell in tanks and rocks.
It has a strong smell and efficient working. Make sure to use the hot water for preparing the bleach bath.
Soak the rocks in this bleach solution for about one and a half hours. It will remove all the algal blooms, fungus, nitrogenous waste, bacteria, fishy odor other odorous things from the rocks.
After the completion of 1.5 hours, take out the rocks and then dry them in sunlight for a couple of days.
It is because the bleach might be inside the rock and putting them earlier in the fish tank can cause bleach to mix in the tank water.
While when you dry it in the sunlight for many days, the bleachy water will dry up and evaporate. In this way, your rocks will be safe to use in the aquarium again.
Your rocks will become completely clean and tidy, just like the ones that you newly bought from the online market.
This product is used industrially and domestically for cleaning purposes. You can quickly found it in your home.
Use Nylon Bristle Brush to clean live rock
The brushes with nylon bristles are excellent to clean the hard surfaces like rocks. They help a lot in cleaning the aquarium rocks deeply.
Gently soak the rocks in saltwater and then rub it with brush. Move the brush to the pits of the stones for deep cleaning.
Saltwater will kill all the bacteria, and the brush will remove them. This brush also removes the dirt, sticky fish poop, algae, and fungus too.
This brush will also remove the white film and other sticky dead material. After doing all this, air dry your rocks and decorate them in your aquarium again.
Make sure that the salt you use in this procedure is fresh, with a specific gravity of 1.021 – 1.025. It is proven to be quite useful than that of the other salts. You can use the aquarium salt buckets available online for saltwater aquariums.
Use Turkey Baster
Another method is to use the turkey baster when the rocks are arid. First of all, take off the rock from your aquarium water.
Dry them in air and sunlight. After it is dry from the outside and inside both, use a baster to remove the dry fish poop and dirt.
This method is also quite useful for keeping the live rocks clean. This tool is available easily in homes as well as you can buy it from Amazon.
You can use this simple tool when your rock is hugely delicate to break and wash, and you do not want to lose it.
On the dry rock, everything is already dead, so it is easy to remove it with this tool. You can also use turkey baster on wet rocks.
It creates a pump of water expel the debris out of the rock. It also eliminates the bacteria to come into the tank water.
It is better to take out the rock in some other water container undone use the baster. It can also remove the detritus from the pebble.
Gravel Cleaner
If you have so many rocks in your big fish tank, then you can clean them collectively with a gravel cleaner.
This equipment will create water flow and let the nitrogenous waste to come out of the rocks by creating a suction.
All fish poop will come up in the cleaning tube, and dirty water will remove through it. You can clean all your rocks and gravel by using a gravel cleaner.
Install a Canister Filter and Powerhead
Now, add a mechanical filtration tip in your fish aquarium. You have to do nothing but add a canister filter in your aquarium.
By keeping the water in a current form, it will remove the trap particles from rocks, gravel, and decorations, hence everything.
Filters can help a lot in keeping the tank environment clean by removing the debris daily.
Sometimes filter alone is not able to clean the aquarium rocks and decorations thoroughly. So, there is a need for a powerhead to keep the water flowing.
It will help the bottom water keeps coming up, and fish poop keeps filtering correctly. The aquarium powerhead can speed up the cleaning process, which is extremely good for your aquarium.
Why Is It Important to Keep the Live Rocks Clean inside a fish tank?
It is necessary to maintain the proper hygiene and quality of everything inside a tank. It is also crucial for the health of your pet fish.
It is your moral duty to provide a clean environment for you to have pet fish. When the rocks are clear, it gives an attractive look to your tank.
Only and only the reef aquarium looks cool when it has no fish, and it is just for the decoration with green algae on rocks to give an under ocean look.
Otherwise, unwanted growth is never a recommendation for a live aquarium. Small fish need a clean environment to stay healthy and active, even if the filter is present.
What is the Best Way to Clean Live Rock?
- Do not overfeed your pet fish so that decomposed food would not pile up in the rocks.
- Never ignore to install a filter anywhere in the fish aquarium so that the daily quality cleaning should achieve.
- Use the gravel cleaner twice in a week, even if the filter is available.
- Must cure the live rock once or twice in a month.
- Cycling your tank is very important to keep things clean, filter waste, avoid decomposition, and bad smell with the help of good bacteria.
- Remove the dying fish, coral, sponges, and as soon as possible. Inspection of these things is essential to keep the rocks and tank clean.
Is It Necessary to Use Rocks In Fish Tank?
Definitely yes, rocks are the perfect hiding spot for your fish. They can rest there and get darkness whenever they need it.
They can take a nap in the rocks very quickly. Also, it makes them feel safe from external harms.
Rocks make the fish feel like they are in the big sea or ocean and give a home feel to them.
What are the Benefits Of Using Rocks in Aquarium?
- Rocks add a natural look to the aquarium.
- They give an attractive look and provide shelter to your fish.
- They help the fish to thrive properly.
- Even the rocks are the source of food for some of the fish species.
- They allow good bacteria to make a colony on them and serve for functional purposes.
- Rocks absorb the nitrogenous waste and their lousy smell and help in proper maintenance.
Big rocks take more than four weeks for proper cleaning. So you have to wait to make the cliff completely clear. Running this rocks cleaning process can be stinky.
You can add carbon to avoid the stinky smell from this procedure. Dump all the water that dirty water in which you clean the rocks.
After putting the rocks back in your aquarium test the ammonia levels, they must be zero now. After that, you can add your first fish, and you have done doing everything.
Read this guide thoroughly to get the proper understanding of cleaning aquarium live rocks.
Related Articles:
