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Hey Ned and everyone else.....

I just bought myself a whole tank setup. It was previously used as a saltwater tank. And the person included about 50+lbs. of (dead) live rock. It was sitting in her basement for about a year, so you can see why it's dead now.

Two questions......

1- Can I use this rock in my tank?

2- Is there anything that I could add to the tank or rock to make it "live" again?

the problem is...
when it was alive (had clean saltwater rushing around it)
it had good algaes, bacterias, and all kinds of tiny critters living in and on it....

so after all that material died and dried
it basically becomes nitrate (dirt) or worse ammonia (rotten stuff)...

so
you might want to try washing it really well
in cold fresh water...then set it up in a saltwater tank
with no fish or animals for a month or so
and keep testing for ammonia and nitrite and nitrate.
Basically what you've got is like you say dead rock...
we sell it here for about $1.50 per pound (dry coral base rock)
but our stuff is cleaner and shouldn't throw any nitrate
because it has already been dead for centuries....

any material like that (even a cement brick) will become "live"
in a reef aquarium after about a year