Aquarium Decoration (Rocks, Plants and Substrates) • clean alge cover rocks

[spankym13]

I have a bunch of texas holey rock i got from a friends aquarium. They havent been used in sometime. All are just covered in green/brown algee like caked on. How could i get these white again?

[13razorbackfan]

Had the exact same scenario for me a couple months ago. I just found a large pot and boiled them in a little bleach and water. The boiling took all the algae off with no scrubbing. Even with the large pot I still had to turn the rocks over once meaning only half the rock would be submerged at a time. Worked well for me. I then rinsed them off and let them soak for a couple days in dechlorinated water. You can click on the links in my signature below and see how white I got them.

[spankym13]

When u say a little bleach are you talking like a cup per standard pot??

[13razorbackfan]

When u say a little bleach are you talking like a cup per standard pot??

I put in about a cup of bleach and a gallon of water. Let me try to be a bit more detailed. Also...I don't know how big your rocks are but you can see mine in my video.

I had a large pot with double handles used for making stew. I also used one of those large oval turkey roasting pans. The turkey roasting pan isn't but maybe 5" deep but it is big around. It also overlapped my electric burner on my stove by 4 or 5" on each side. I just put it directly over the burner evenly spaced on both sides.

I fill each with about a cup or so of bleach and the rest with water. Turned the burners on high and waited for them to come to a boil. I then put one rock in each. The largest rock which is more long than tall I put in the turkey roasting pan. I let them boil and after about 10 minutes the parts of the rocks submerged in the boiling water were TOTALLY clean and white...no algae or scrubbing. I then used some heavy duty oven mits and rotated the rocks so the parts that were above water were now submerged. Ten minutes later all algae gone. I set both those rocks off to the side and did my other two rocks.

Also...this is VERY important. Make sure you have very good ventilation with windows open when doing this. Don't stand above the steam. Just check in on them quickly without hovering for too long.

After they were bleached I took them outside and rinsed them with the water hose. I then filled a 30g rubbermaid tub with water and dosed with enough seachem safe for probably 500 gallons or more. Seachem safe is what I use instead of seachem prime because it is much much more concentrated but it comes in powder form. Per gallon it is the cheapest dechlorinator on the market. Anyways...suffice it to say that I used a lot of dechlorinator. I then put the rocks in the dechlorinated water with a power head to keep the water circulating. I did this overnight. The next morning I dumped the water, filled back up and used more dechlorinator. I did this again later that evening. On the third day I rinsed the rocks again and let them sit in the sunlight to air dry for the rest of the day. The 4th day I smelled them and they smelled good with no bleach smell and put them in my tank.

I had no issues.

[spankym13]

Thats great! Thank you for your time. Im young and newer to the hobby, bout 2 year into it. So these forums help me learn so much

[13razorbackfan]

Thats great! Thank you for your time. Im young and newer to the hobby, bout 2 year into it. So these forums help me learn so much

Glad I could help....let me know how it goes.

[Tpb55]

Try a pressure washer on them it will blast a lot of algae off
Tim