How long can LR stay out of water before it needs to be cured again?

I never really got the chance to do a major re aquascape many months ago like I originally intended. My tank just looks like a pile of rocks and I'm tired of it so I've set many hours this weekend to finally get this done. Im only worried that while Im epoxing or seeing how rocks fit together, there's going to be significant die off which will cause a cycle. I cant afford this since I only have one tank and have no where else to keep my joven's wrasse and potter's angel as well as some corals while the tank re cycles.

So what would be considered a safe time frame to have LR out of the water?

TL1000RSquid said:

First if your epoxying I would use epoxy that will cure underwater so you don't have to let it set for hours. Second since you'll be draining most of the tank keep the rock submerged in buckets till your ready to work with the particular pieces. Overall you should be able to go a couple hours with out to significant of a die off just try to keep it moist.

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Im not even sure if what im calling epoxy is actually epoxy. its just this putty like thing that you can use to stick rock or corals together. It does cure underwater so I dont have to keep the rock out while the bond hardens.

And actually I wasn't planning to drain most of the tank. I was gonna take about 20 gallons of water out and put it into the bins I mentioned to keep the live rock. Im using bins instead of buckets so that hopefully its a bit easier to see the rock and pick which piece I want rather than have to take out 4-5 pieces to get to a particular piece.


Glad to know I have a few hours to do this though. Im thinking that should be enough and I have mixed water on standby to do a waterchange just as a precaution.

greech said:

A few hours is a bit much IMO especially if you will have the majority of rock out. I wouldn't leave rock out of the water more than 30-minutes and even that is pushing it (again, IMO/IME). Don't overthink this. Mix up some new SW for a WC and fill your bin(s) with the old water you drain out of the display to keep your rocks wet as you rearrange. It will be good to do a WC in conjunction with all of this anyway. You will be surprised to see how much detritus is on your sandbed under base rocks of your current pile and you will want to siphon that out. I personnaly despise using the exopy putty but it will set set enough that the rock will "stick" (but not completely hold if you bump it around) fairly quick. I find that rock will typically fit together one way or another and even breaking a rock here or there will give you the pieces you need. Grab a few beers and pop a few chill pills and you'll be good to go . Good luck!

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I dont think I will need to have any single piece of rock out of water for more than 20-30 minutes anyways so that works out in my favor. I can just take a rock out, see how it fits with another rock, apply some putty if need be, and then throw it back into my display.

I was specifically thinking about all the detritus underneath my rock as well, that's actually the main reason I mixed up a 20 gal batch of SW...The one problem I am seeing is that I will probably need to make more SW because I am going to be taking out 20 gals of tank water to put into the bins for my LR. But since there is so much sand bed that needs to be siphoned(honestly I haven't really done any siphoning in about a year since the tank started running), I will probably be siphoning out another 15-20 gallons of tank water while I am siphoning my sand bed...so I forsee myself going to home depot to pick up another can to store water lol.

Whew, some elaborate planning going on here lol. Will definitely need to grab a case and set up some music while I do all this lol