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Old 03-24-2008, 12:56 AM
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Myka Myka is offline
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You bought uncured liverock, and it is now in the process of curing aka cycling. Personally, I prefer to do this curing stage in Rubbermaid tubs in the dark (with a heater and powerhead for circulation) instead of in the actual aquarium, but that is a whole different conversation. I think it would be a good option for you to consider as it is a better way to cure your rock, and you will end up with MUCH MUCH less nuisance algaes. If you're interested I can elaborate.

For the record, your rock will cycle the aquarium just fine. You do NOT need to add fish to cycle a tank that has live rock in it. Cycling with fish in my opinion is very cruel, and completely unnecessary.

Do you have any test kits? If not, go buy some...try Salifert or Elos brands, in my opinion everything else is a waste of money due to inaccuracy. Start testing for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. pH is a good one to monitor at this stage as well. You should see the ammonia go up, then come down, then the nitrite will go up, and come down. Then you should see nitrates. If your rock is good live rock it should be able to do a good job eliminating the nitrates as well, or at least keeping them real low. So, once you see ammonia at 0, nitrite at 0 (not almost 0, I mean AT 0), and nitrate below 10 ppm then you can add a small cleanup crew. This will usually take 3-6 weeks. After the cleanup crew is settled for a couple weeks you can start to add a fish here and there. Once you start getting some coralline algae patches that are nickel to quarter sized then you can start to add corals.

Time to play the waiting game until your parameters are good.
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Last edited by Myka; 03-24-2008 at 01:03 AM.
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