Live rock questions

I recently bought some live rock from some guy who claimed it to be live, I got there which was about an hour away, No wonder he was selling 10 pounds of fiji rock for 20 bucks : The question is, He said the rock sat in a half filled tank with no circulation or heater for a couple of months. Now is it savable? I ended up buying it because the worst is I can always cure it. So any suggestions? it doesn't smell dead or look brown or dark.
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Are you adding it directly to a existing tank? It should still have live bacteria on it, but probably has had some die off so you may see a cycle.

 

No, I'll be using it for a new tank. He gave me the tank also which housed the rocks, Also it has a nice sand bed he started which looks like a nice brown and didn't have any dark spots that look dead. Would I be able to use that too? It has some inverts that are still alive, ie; snails and red legged hermit.

 

I wouldnt use an old sandbed that has been sitting around for a couple months, without any gravel vacs on it and sifting from fish or inverts, it can accumulate some pretty nasty stuff. I would take the sand bed and go get another load of sand. Although, you can use a SMALL amount of the sand that was in the tank, because it will still have some bacteria in it, so it will do a quicker job at curing and making the new sand more beneficial quicker.

The LR is probably not all alive, it still has a pulse but its barely there. You may see a small spike in your params, but nothing extreme like a new cycle would have. Just get your tank setup and get some flow in there, and let it sit for a few days(3-4) and test your water for Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. If all those params are at 0, wait another 2 days or so and test it again, if its still 0 then you may be good. Whenever i get new tanks, i test for one week and if all is good, i start adding livestock..But thats just me.

 

+1 here, I'd do new sand then use teh rock to cycle the new tank.

 

I got some new sand, Do most people use black sand for their substrate? I got some of that because it looked neat. I'll do that as soon as I get out of work here, Should I also use some live rock from an established tank to cycle this new tank? or should I just use the rocks I have?

 

I would advise trying to start a cycle by adding some raw shrimp rather than just letting it sit for a few days and assuming. If the rock is "near death" you wont get it to cycle by just adding flow- you need to add something for it to eat (raw shrimp is a good option).

Then you can sit back and wait to see if it cycles. My guess is that it will since the bacteria population is probably very low and it will need to grow in order to support a bioload.

 

There is no downside to adding rock that you know is live. It will only help speed things up.

 

Okay so I got everything started, adding water with reef crystal mix, have the powerhead making sure everything has flow and the invert hermit is in there too. So I'm about to add a prawn, how long should I leave it in there for?

 

Dropped a small piece of shrimp to start the cycle, I'll be adding a couple extra pounds of fresh live rock. and later on a few members of the cuc