Live rock confusion

[StirCrazy]

ok, I am going to take the different aproach here. you added 32 lbs of fully cured LR to a 38 gal tank. you won't see a cycle at all unless you realy over dose an amonia source. the reason is that basicly because your tank is already cycled. at 1 hour max wraped in wet newspaper, it will be very doutfull you will have any significant die off, and the rock is fully established with bacteria. when you compare the amount of bacterian in LR to what is in the water colume it is a huge difference.. manymany times the maount in the rock compared to water and the important ones are deep with in the rock and not in the water anyways. for all practical purposes with in a day of the multiplication of the bacteria it wouldn't matter.

so my recomendation is to still take it slow, but go ahed and add hermits if you want them and some snails. if you lose a couple snails no big deal, but I doubt you would lose any more than normal if you aclimate them properly.

when I did mine I added 180lbs of LR with about 20 corals which were atached, to a 94 gal tank. I tried using dead raw shrimp to start a cycle but after adding about 1/2 a lb of shrimp and watching the rot and disapear there was still no cycle as the rock brough all the critteres and bacteria that was needed. I added a cleanup crew of hermits and snails, then a week later I bought a fish. if you are looking at a couple clowns add you cleen up crew right away then in a few weeks start looking at your clowns.

this is actualy a common method for a quick start up of display tanks, the tank is new but the filtering agent (the live rock) is well established.

the problem you get into is when you buy LR with lots of algae, sponges, and such on it and it is out of the water long enough for a die off then it is no longer cured and has to be re-cured.

Steve

[Ryanst]

I dont know if i should put in my two cents or not but I have never been one to hold my tongue. lol I have set up 4 tanks in the past year and didnt see an ammonia spike or anything ever in any of the tanks. In my opinion if you buy cured live rock and after a week or so you dont see a spike in ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate and you take a couple of the rocks out and smell them and they dont smell like rotten eggs or anything bad I would add a hardyish smaller fish. monitor everything over the next 2 weeks and if everything is good I would add another fish. This is just my way of starting new tanks.