Hey guys I bought this liverock from a guy and he told me just to scrape it off and that I had nothing to worry about? What do you guys think this is and I scraped most of it off. Is it safe to put in my tank? I had to scrape off around 5-6 of these rocks that were like this.
the rock is still good but I wouldn't put that in the tank the way it is. I'd dry out the rock, give it a bath in muriatic acid and cure it all over again. Who knows what else is in that rock because it didn't look like it came from pristine conditions
Dont do it not worth the pests or other hitchhikers that may come on it. I just started my tank completely with dry dead rock avoid all those issues. Not worth the hassle of having issues, take homie up on his dead rock offer!
A bath in bleach is safer than muriatic acid, though the acid will certainly kill it without question, but the advice for a chemical dip is really the only sure way to do it. A wire brush will only have it come back.
Id say just get new rock, introducing GHA can be regretful real quick and will spread like fire or just bump up your phosphates/Nitrates and have a bigger algae bloom after die off.
You can just dump it in freshwater for a little while and kill off the algae then you can use the rock again in your tank. I've done it a bunch of times.
Seems like you're fairly new to the hobby. Please be extra careful when taking a toothbrush to rocks.... if it happens to have some zoa's on it, you can get seriously ill. i've heard one too many horror stories about palytoxin. Just a fair warning!