question about exsposing cured lr to air

[jquailus]

so I really hate my aquascaping and i want to take it all down and build one large pillar my tank is a 30 tall. the question is my tank has been up and running for about 5 months now and my fish are in a qt tank ( ich issue) anyways i want to take all my lr out and restack it in a pillar will i have any dead loss if i leave it in a bucket of sw and take it out to build the pillar, having the rock out of the water for no more than about 30 min

[tanker]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11114247#post11114247 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jquailus
if i leave it in a bucket of sw and take it out to build the pillar, having the rock out of the water for no more than about 30 min

:confused:

If you put the LR in a bucket of SW it would be just fine.

Out of water for 30mins (no water) you will probably have a mini-cycle.

[mfinn]

I've moved live rock around many times, exposing it to air for as much as a 1/2 hour and never experienced a problem.

[CleveYank]

shallow water lagoons and the fringes of the reefs where rock ledges meet the sea end up exposed during low tides. Outcrops and built up reefheads as well.

Populated with everything under the sun. Except for most fish that can get trapped and end up out of water, nothing dies even with baking in the sun.

If your liverock was in good shape to begin with it will not skip a beat.

If I ran out of room in holding buckets, tanks, clean garbage cans, a bathtub (once)...I have put the liverock on a garbage bag with regular papertowels over it that were soaked in the tanks saltwater. Could play aquascaper for 4 to 6 hours until I got back to it without even having to rewet the towels. Unless you have a fan or heat vent blowing nearby. I have a tank that when I want to do a major water change to I have to turn off metal halides and put wet paper towels over 3 major rocks. One of which has a delicate SPS colony. It takes me about 20 minutes to do the 40 to 50 gallon water change that I do on the system once a year. Salt is premixed a couple days before with RO/DI water. And I pump tank down to the witness marks on back side pane for this exact water change. No problem. No worries. Bounty. It's not just for picking up skimmer spills.